Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you saved information or files to your drive or server and they mysteriously vanished? Do you remember that panicked feeling when you worked overtime to meet that project deadline only to realize all your hard work was somehow lost? Keep reading to find out how you can avoid this calamity altogether with data recovery.
What Is Data Loss?
To give you a better understanding of data recovery and its benefits, let’s talk about data loss and how it occurs. Data loss is the result of information being corrupted or unreadable due to human or software error during the handling or storage process. If you’re like most of us, then you think you’re careful with how you handle your data. So why should you worry about it?
Common Causes of Data Loss
If you are a small business owner (SMB), then protecting your data is one of your top priorities – or at least it should be. So listen up – The top cause of data loss is due to human error. Yes, that’s correct. No matter how careful you or your employees think you are with saving or backing up your data, you and your team are still human and make mistakes.
A few other top causes of data loss are viruses, mechanical damage, power failure, physical damage due to spills or other element-related incidents, and theft.
What Is Data Recovery?
Now that you understand what data loss is, let’s define data recovery. It is an alternative way to recover your data when it is lost or inaccessible to you using your normal methods. This may sound like a job for James Bond or a skilled ninja, however, it’s not as complicated or top secret as it sounds.
Data recovery is simply restoring what you thought was lost forever by secondary methods. So, if it’s so easy, then why is data recovery important to your business?
Why is it Important?
Data recovery is especially important for small to midsize businesses because they are the most affected by data loss, according to recent studies. In fact, 60% of businesses are forced to close their doors just six months after being affected by data loss, 58% are not prepared for data loss, and 29% of these losses are caused by accident.
Not only do you save face with your customers and clients, you save your reputation, staff time, money, and countless hours spent worrying and stressing over something that most likely could have been prevented with extra cautionary steps in place.
Having a data recovery plan is essential to keeping your business operations running on an optimal level. Don’t leave your data open to an unnecessary loss, put a data recovery plan into place now before it’s too late.
Tips and Tricks for Your Data Strategy and SOP
Maybe it’s time to update standard operating procedure (SOP) for your data strategy. Check out these foolproof tips to keep your data safe from accidents:
- Make a data backup plan and put it into action: As an SMB, you know you need a backup strategy in place, but do you follow through with it? Are you consistent with it? If not, then maybe it’s time to get started. One of the most common backup strategies is the 3-2-1 plan: Three backups stored on two different drives with one backup in an off-site location.
- Put a data recovery strategy in place, just in case: No matter how prepared or careful you are, things still happen. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Whether you choose software, a service, or local company; ensure your strategy is one that doesn’t keep you from your daily operations.
- Create a backup schedule: Having a backup strategy is a moot point if you don’t have a regular backup schedule and stick to it. Not sure how often you should backup your data? Completing a backup every 24 hours is always a good idea.
- Complete a test run: Don’t just rely on your backup plan and recovery strategy. Test it out! Why do you think there are fire drills or rehearsals? This is your chance to ensure everything works the way it is supposed to and record the results.
- Employ a good malware/virus protection software: Whether it’s protection software installed for each individual device or one that covers your whole network, invest in software that will protect your data from corruption due to cyber attacks or untrustworthy sites.
- Train your employees: It’s not enough to have a data recovery plan in place if your staff is not aware of what that plan entails. Educate your employees on what to do in case of data loss, how to properly back up their data, and your data recovery strategy as a whole.
Whether you have an IT department that handles all things data for your business or you are trying a DIY approach, make sure you take the time out to protect your data from an avoidable loss. Or maybe the “tech stuff” just isn’t for you, and that’s ok too. If that’s the case, then consider hiring managed IT services to handle it for you.