I’ve talked to a number of business owners recently about their backup scheme, and for the most part it’s been barely adequate. In an age where cloud backups like DropBox, OneDrive and Google Drive are readily available; and disk space & USB hard drives are reasonably cheap – there’s really no excuse to ignore backups.
Well, I backup everything once a month, how good am I!
That’s great! But let me ask you this: can you afford to lose a month’s worth of stuff? What about a week’s worth? To help you make this decision, you need to know your data and know how often it changes. For me, loosing a day’s worth of data would be really annoying. But to loose a week? Yikes!
Ok, you got me. I need to back things up more – but what do I do?
Well, I’m glad I asked!
As you would assume, the main idea behind backups is getting the data duplicated and off-site (out of harms way). So that if something were to happen – if the worst were to happen – you haven’t lost everything. The more business critical the data, the more frequently it needs backing up.
The first decision you will face is where it’s going to be backed up too. I see three choices here:
- The Cloud: A service as noted above (DropBox, OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, etc), or your own cloud (a private remote server),
- Locally managed physical drives: perhaps USB drives that you switch out manually.
- Both cloud and physical local drives: Why not both?
Your first thought might be concerning cost, but what about data sensitivity or data sovereignty?
All backup options have downfalls under different scenarios. Cloud services would be a target for hackers and probably have ongoing costs. While physical drives are open to physical damage & theft, and have no support team. The selection really depends on what your data is and how much you want to interact with the process.
Cloud Based Backups
One point of difference for cloud backups over a more traditional disk based arrangement is file versioning. You will be able to go back and see previous versions of files (assuming this is available on your plan), allowing you to retrieve that file someone accidentally deleted a week ago, or that has been inexplicably corrupted. You can achieve this with a physical disk arrangement, but it means you have larger number of disks in rotation or specialised software.
Other points are:
- you can access your backed up data from anywhere that has an internet connection;
- you are trusting your data to be held securely in a system that someone else maintains;
- if you choose a larger provider, they have to have it secure – but hackers would be probing them constantly;
- should you choose a smaller provider, you have to establish whether or not they have undergone the penetration / hacking testing and have the team to monitor their systems;
- the data falls under the laws of the geographic location that it resides within (data sovereignty);
- cost is distributed over time, but is ongoing;
- the amount of data you store may effect your bill;
- you have to be online to update / get updated files.
Local Backups
As noted above, you can achieve versioning with the right software, or a larger number of disks and high administrative load. But the financial overhead is concentrated to when you buy the disks. Oh, it’s worth knowing that cheap physical storage isn’t always good storage. Did you know that flash drives / USB sticks have (a) a limited number of read/writes, and (b) if not plugged in within a certain time frame can lose lose the stored data? SSDs and USB sticks are great, but for long / medium term storage you need a mechanical (spinning) disk.
Other points of difference for locally managed physical disk drives are:
- it’s primarily offline – meaning that while the disk sits in a draw or safe off site, it cannot be hacked (although it could be stolen);
- you (or your staff) are in charge of it’s functionality fully;
- you need to diligently check & verify the backups routinely to ensure it’s working;
- backup protection (disk encryption) would be managed internally (don’t lose the master keys!).
Remember, a backup that isn’t tested is like Schrodinger’s Cat. The backup both is successful and recoverable, and not.
Why do Both?
Trust.
When you start using a cloud based storage service you’re exercising trust in the supplier of that service. Not just trust in their administrative processes, or the service itself, or even that they’re defending your data from the endless attacks on their systems; but trust that if something goes horribly wrong, they can recover and continue to supply that data to you once more.
But there’s something else you’re trusting. You’re trusting you can get to that service. Trusting in your internet connection, your country’s choices for their people, and the random citizen with the mini-excavator. And that isn’t including natural disasters or acts of war.
Your plan shouldn’t be to guard against the work experience kid deleting the important file. It should be for the worst.
Understanding Your Data
Understanding your data is the most important thing about choosing what backup method you should use. So, what is your data? Is it just a bunch of files? What about emails? Address book? Browser bookmarks? Encrypted password files? In other words – what is it that you can’t do business without?
Once you know what your “data” is you need to know where it is. Is it already centralised on a file server or shared disk? Is it on each individual computer in the workplace? Is it with your staff – on computers at their homes, or on the road all the time on laptops?
Knowing where it is can allow you to work out how big it all is too; allowing you to work out what size physical disks you’d need (note: allow for data growth), or if it is larger than the free cloud services allow and you need to look at a paid service.
As a side point, certain programs (like MS Outlook) lock their data file. So you cannot effectively back those files up while that program is open. This affects all methods of backing up.
Remember, the only wrong plan with backups is having no backups.
NB. There are also some products & operating system features that allow you to encrypt files & folders. Using these would ensure that cloud providers and physical disks have an extra layer of protection against prying eyes.