Ensure that Your Backups are Working!

With the variety of disasters that can occur at any moment, your business has finally decided to leverage a solution that will automatically back up your systems and provide easy access in emergencies. Fantastic! So you're all set, right? Well, not quite. While you've taken a big step in the right direction, you still need to ensure that your backups are working and can be restored when needed.

Danger around every corner

Businesses must ensure that their critical information is protected in every eventuality. If you lose a phone, tablet, or laptop that is used for work purposes, you could compromise all of your files. According to World Backup Day's site, 30 percent of people have never backed up their devices. This is significant, especially since 113 phones are lost or stolen every minute, and 10 percent of computers are infected with viruses each month.

Many people still have not backed up their systems.

For small businesses in particular, there is a lot at stake if the proper security isn't in place. If your systems were attacked or destroyed, would you be able to quickly get operations up and running again? A quarter of organizations don't reopen following a major disaster, according to the Institute for Business and Home Safety, and you don't want your own company to be among this group. There are numerous risks to consider, and it will be critical to ensure that your backups function appropriately.

Complete regular tests

Although a majority of people have run a backup, that doesn't mean that they are doing so consistently or successfully. Having a backup plan is only one piece of the puzzle - you must also verify that the backups are in working order. According to TechTarget contributor Rick Cook, you must test regularly to ensure you can recover the data, and you should design your test protocol to evaluate all aspects of your recovery performance.

"Backup is more than what goes into the vault," Cook wrote. "It includes all the tiers of your backup system, including the incremental backups, any disk-based backups, recovery disks and anything else you need to get up and running again. All these things need to be tested to make sure they're working properly and that they're working together."

When it comes to ensuring business success, you must be prepared for the inevitable, which means ensuring that your backups are working. To find out more about guaranteeing that your backups are functioning appropriately, check out our video!