In recognition of World Backup Day, this March 31st, we are highlighting the essential role played by senior management in making sure organizations have proper data backup systems in place.
Backup is a critical component of Corporate Risk Management and Business Continuity. Data backup plans are often necessary to fulfill corporate compliance requirements. Since data availability is vital to the success of most businesses, senior management needs to be sure backup and restoral programs are properly structured and funded to mitigate corporate risks.
Though most senior executives are not data backup experts, they should understand the fundamentals. Corporate leadership must approve the data designated as critical to their company’s operations. They must be sure adequate backup plans are in place to protect this data. This is part of senior management’s responsibility to allocate the resources needed to manage corporate risk.
5 Data Backup Questions for Management
Senior managers should be able to answer the following questions.
- What is the most critical business application at your company?
- How long can this critical business application be out of service before your business suffers an unacceptable loss?
- How frequently does your company backup the data from this critical business application?
- What is the longest time data for this critical business application can be lost without being restored?
- How long does your company store the back-ups for this critical business application?
Data Backup Considerations
There are many ways to back-up critical company data. Data can be copied to removable media, backed-up to another local storage device, and/or replicated to Private or Public Cloud-based storage. Regardless of the backup methodology chosen, there are several backup principles to follow.
- Multiple backup copies should be made.
- Backups should be stored in different locations.
- Backups should be archived on different types of storage media.
- There should be an ability to encrypt data transmitted to remote storage devices.
Public Cloud or Private Cloud?
Blue Hill/CAPS is one of the few Veeam Cloud Connect service providers in the Northeast that offers backup and replication services provisioned entirely from company owned regional data centers. These 100% Private Cloud services offer the greatest level of control and security with superior performance and cost-effectiveness. For clients with demanding compliance requirements, there is no better choice.
