Business Data Backup Auburn

What you need to know about business data backup services in Auburn

Data is so important to modern businesses that it has spawned multiple industry sectors and job functions from data protection, to database administration to data analysis. Even SMBs will typically have a lot of data to be protected, which means they need a good business data backup strategy. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to what you need to know about business data backup services in Auburn.

You need to be able to trust the people working with your data

These days most businesses have to manage data that has legal implications, for example, sensitive data and data which is needed for compliance purposes. They are also very likely to have data that may not have a specific legal standing, but which they would prefer to keep confidential such as intellectual property they are developing but which has not yet been suitably protected.

This means that you need to be able to trust the people working with your data and the more access they have to it, the more you need to be able to trust them. This starts with the appropriate vetting of both in-house staff and IT services vendors. The more access they have to your data, the more thoroughly you should vet them).

You then need to proceed on a “trust-but-verify” basis. In other words, you need to set expectations and ensure people have the resources they need to meet them. You then need to back these expectations with an enforceable contract. The simple reality is that the closer someone is to you, the easier it is to take legal action against them, so it’s generally advisable to stick with local IT staff and IT services vendors in Auburn, especially for SMBs.

You still need two data backups

The 3-2-1 adage dates back to data centers, where having a local data backup and an off-site data backup meant exactly that. You had one copy on physical storage in your data center and one copy in an off-site storage facility. These days, it’s increasingly likely that your “local” data backup will actually be held away from your business premises, even if you run a private cloud. Even so, it will still be effectively local, so you do need a “proper” off-site copy.

The public cloud is fine for most business data backups

If you’re already using a public cloud, then (hopefully) you’ve already checked that you’re fine to have your data there, in which case it generally makes complete sense to use a second public cloud to hold your “off-site” data backups. You could then add the tools you needed to work with the data, for example, an operating system and applications, to make a complete cloud disaster recovery solution.

If you’re in a data center or private cloud, you can generally still use a public cloud as a place to store your business data backups. You’ll need to encrypt them before sending them over the internet anyway, you’d just keep them encrypted in the public cloud until you used them or deleted them.

You may also be able to use the public cloud as a disaster recovery solution. This isn’t guaranteed but it is becoming increasingly feasible as public cloud providers come into compliance with mainstream data protection laws and compliance programs (including international ones such as GDPR). If your budget is tight then it’s definitely worth checking.

Fine-tuning your RTOs can help to keep costs low

Your Recovery Time Objective defines how quickly you need your data back online. It, therefore, influences the speed of storage you use. In the days of data centers, you would typically have one RTO for all of your data. In the cloud, it’s much easier to use different storage speeds for different kinds of data. This is just as well because choosing the right storage speed for the right data makes much more of a difference to your costs in the cloud than it does in data centers.

If you have already fine-tuned your use of storage speeds in your production environment, then you can generally just replicate these for your online data backups (or use something very close to them). If you haven’t then it’s worth taking the time to do so as it really can reduce your cloud storage costs.

You need to move dormant data out of your production systems as quickly as possible

Dormant data clearly isn’t needed in your production system so either delete it or archive it until it can be deleted. For completeness, you will still need to delete it from the archive, otherwise, you will still run up unnecessary costs, albeit at a slower rate.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced business data backup services provider in Auburn, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.