World Backup Day: why backing up data is important

In light of World Backup Day on the 31^st of March, we want to raise a little awareness on the importance of data backup – and why you and your customers should be getting on board.

Why do my customers  need backup?

First things first, to sell a backup solution to your customers, both you and your customers need to really understand why they need it. Below, we have identified a few customer scenarios to help show just how effortlessly data loss can happen.

Customer problem 1: Your customer runs a financial business, and therefore has taken all preventative measures to stop outsiders getting into the building and retrieving any valuable data. However, a recent data breach has occurred which has been an inside job.

Your customer suspects this insider attack could have been performed by an ex-employee who recently left on bad terms, but there is no evidence of this. Your customer regularly changes passwords and has implemented a secure mailbox security solution to stop cyber-attacks. However, because passwords aren’t changed after every employee leaves, the attacker still has access to all the company passwords, and therefore all the data. They hold the data at ransom until a large fee is paid.

Solution: Backing up your customers’ data could solve this. Whether data is held at ransom or completely wiped out from an attack, ensuring an effective backup solution is in place means that your customers’ files will be stored in a different location, whether that be online storage or on a server in a different location.

Customer problem 2: Your customers’ business is quite small, with only a few, trusted employees handling data. However, one of these employees has been having trouble sleeping lately, which has been affecting how they are working. They clear out some folders from both their desktop and his recycling bin to have a bit of a tidy up, however, one of these folders contain lots of important documents from a client.

Because the recycling bin was also cleared out, there is no longer any trace of these files on their computer to retrieve, therefore these files are gone for good.

Solution: Because human error is something that can’t be prevented, having a backup solution in place for your customers’ data is vital. If your customer has implemented a backup and restoration solution, their employee could’ve quickly and easily retrieved these files – and them taken themselves home for a good, long nap!

Customer problem 3: Your customer and their employees leave the office Friday evening, ready for a relaxed weekend ahead. However, over the weekend your customer receives a phone call to let them know that there has been an unfortunate fire incident within the building, and not much of the buildings contents is retrievable.

Although the fire was put out quickly and no one was harmed, your customers’ data centre and servers have been completely destroyed in the fire. They didn’t have any backup solution in place, meaning that any data on these servers had been completely destroyed and unable to be retrieved.

Solution: Whilst natural disasters are inevitable, data loss is not. If your customer had stored their data either on another server or using cloud backup through a hybrid approach, they would have been be able to retrieve all of their data back in minutes.

How is data backed up?

So, now you know that you need to help your customers to backup and restore their data, how do you do it? Firstly, that depends on whether your customers have an on-premises server or are storing their data in the cloud. Below, we’ll highlight the differences in how to help your customers backup:

On Premise – If you have customers that are still using on-premise servers, they are able to back up by using a hard drive. Whilst they may feel more secure knowing that their data is physically in front of them, there is always a risk that something could happen to that hard drive also.

However, having an on-premise doesn’t mean they can’t utilise the cloud. With the hybrid approach becoming increasingly popular, lots of SMBs are opting for this. A hybrid model is when some of the data is backed up on local or network hard drives on premises, whilst some is backed up in the cloud. Customers may opt for a hybrid approach if they aren’t yet ready to make the full move to the cloud but want to benefit from the security that comes with it.

Cloud Backup – For those with customers utilising the cloud and online storage, they can easily backup their data in another virtual server, rest assured that their data is backed up should anything happen. There are plenty of advantages of cloud storage, including the ability to scale up or down to however much space they need, budget accordingly and only pay for what they use, as well as have data backed up across multiple servers should any server go down at any time.

To conclude, having backup really can save a lot of money and hassle in the long run! We hope you’re reading this blog post, knowing that you and your customers all already know this. However, if you didn’t – we hope this has been a wake-up call in protecting both you and your customers. For more information on cloud backup solutions available to you, contact our Account Management team on 0333 332 0888.