Best Practices for Data Backup

Presented by Universe Point
Data backup is a crucial concern for any business. Even if we haven't achieved that mythical paperless office, most companies rely on electronic storage for the safe-keeping of some, if not all, of their most important information. Yet, the process of safe-guarding that information through data backup is often mishandled and misunderstood. As a result, many companies stand on the brink of potentially disastrous loss without even being aware of the cliff edge at their feet.

The goal of this document is to keep you from falling off that cliff. This will provide you with best practice guidelines for setting up the right data backup solution for your organization. We hope that you enjoy the information and are able to use it to keep your vital data safe. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at 610-352-1150, through our online forum at www.universepoint.com or email nic@universepoint.com.

Step 1: Evaluating Your Backup Needs

The initial problem most companies face is in determining their backup needs. Often too little is done to protect data because, as the saying goes, you don't miss it until its gone. So, the first step in determining your backup requirements lies in understanding the value and vulnerability of your data. Let's ask a few important questions:

1. What types of crucial data do I have?
2. Where is that data currently stored?
3. What are the potential results of losing that data?

What types of crucial data do I have?

Start by making a list of all the data that keeps your company running. Include everything you can think of no matter how seemingly insignificant. We will get to prioritizing the data later.

For example, one company's list might look like this:

• Quickbooks Files
• Active Directory
• Customer Data
• Personal Documents
• Emails
• IE Favorites

I'm sure, without proceeding any further, you can already see how important much of this data would be to our sample company, but let's move on to our next question.

Where is that data currently stored?

Now lets take our list of important data and make sure we know where and how it is stored.

Here is how our sample company's storage looks:

• Quickbooks Files - Server
• Active Directory - Server
• Customer Data - Server
• Personal Documents - My Computer
• Emails - My Computer
• IE Favorites - My Computer

So, now that we have listed our data and tracked it down, its time to try to imagine what might happen if one of those storage devices were to fail.

What are the potential results of losing that data?

Servers and hard drives fail for a variety of reasons including wear, viruses, heat and that cup of coffee you just spilled on your machine. Many of these, unlike the cup of coffee, are virtually unavoidable and might happen without you immediately realizing. So, lets take our list one last time and try to determine what effect each of these losses might have on your business.

For this example we will have our sample company rank each of their data category losses as Fatal (bye-bye business), Major (this is going to seriously hurt our bottom line), Minor (honey I'm gonna be working late) and Negligible (great now I'll have to spend ten minutes recreating that).

• Quickbooks Files - Fatal
• Active Directory - Major
• Customer Data - Major
• Personal Documents - Minor
• Emails - Minor
• IE Favorites - Negligible

This rating system will differ for every company, but regardless of your specific priority levels, chances are there is some data your company cannot afford to lose. Even losing something as simple as email archives can, in some instances, result in a huge waste of time, effort and money.