Backing Up Your Data – what are the best practices
How to protect your valuable data
Data loss can happen at any time. Someone might inadvertently delete some files on their computer, a hard disk drive might suddenly fail, a server could get infected with ransomware or maybe your laptop is stolen. Whatever the cause, when data loss occurs, you want to be sure that you have a backup of everything that is important.
So how do you ensure your data is never lost?
The 3, 2, 1 backup rule
The 3, 2, 1 backup rule is simple, you should have three copies of your important data, two backup copies stored internally on two different devices and the third copy should be offsite. So, for example you could have a Network Attached Storage device onsite, with a copy of this data on an external hard disk drive and a third copy stored in the cloud or offsite in another location.
This means if one of your backup device fails you still have two copies of your data and if you have a serious incident on your site, such as a flood, you still have a copy of your data offsite.
Ransomware and Backup’s
While the ransomware virus has been on the decline in recent months we can never be sure if there will be another similar outbreak. One of the more serious aspect of the ransomware attack was the way in which the virus tried to encrypt all the data on backup devices including any external hard disk drives attached to the backup device. As a result of these attacks it is important to ensure the backup device is password protected and only accessible from devices that need to be backed up.
The time to restore data
Once you have everything backed up another consideration is how long will it take to restore this data, especially if you have to recover a workstation or a server. Better backup solutions are designed to enable you to restore your data quickly and if necessary you can recover your data to another device.
Encrypting your backed-up data
If you are backing up a lot of critical and sensitive data you may want to ensure your backup devices are encrypted. Many NAS devices and external hard disk drives have encryption as standard and most Cloud Backup providers ensure the data is encrypted before leaving your site.
Solutions available from Deycom
Deycom Computer provide a range of backup solution including physical backup devices, backup software, offsite backup solutions and Cloud backup services. If you have any queries regarding your own backup we would be delighted to hear from you. You can contact our sales team on 059 913077 or email info@deycom.com