| Did you know… backup plans increase the chance of you recovering your activity entirely after data loss? |
Data losses can occur due to:
- Accidental damage arising from deletion or modification of data
- Hardware malfunction
- Natural disasters – fires, floods, among others
- Theft of loss of devices
- Modification, deletion, or corruption or files by viruses or malware
- Ransomware attacks where payment is required to unlock encrypted files
Backups are copies of professionally or personally relevant files to a secure location that is accessible and different than laptops, smartphones, and tablets, where the only existing version of data is generally stored.
Here are some guidelines for the use of quality backups:
1. Organize your information
- Take some time to organize your data and documents, and make sure that you make a copy of all you need
2. Define what should be included in the backup
- All information that is essential to your business or information you use frequently
- Sensitive organizational data, such as financial records, information about customers, proposals, and critical internal and external information
- Network configuration information, documents containing policies and processes, and information concerning app licenses
- All relevant personal files, such as photos and videos of relatives or friends
3. Select the backup options that suit your needs
- At a professional level: use and observe the backup policies and mechanisms defined by your organization
- At a personal level not including corporate information, you can use:
- External drives: they are portable, intuitive, and have high storage capacity, therefore being ideal for large files
- USB flash drives or thumb drives: have a lower storage capacity, are small, portable, and ideal for transferring files from a device to another device
- Clouds: they have a high storage capacity, and allow for content encryption, storing data online, and access data at any time using a device that is connected to the Internet
- Hard copies: in some cases, it can make sense to have hard copies of some documents, in addition to digital copies
4. Establish frequency
- Keep a regular backup dynamic
- Backup your critical data at least daily
- Make your backup process automatic by setting your backup to be made according to regular intervals or after each edition, minimizing the probability of information loss
5. Perform multiple backups and test your strategy
- Make sure that you create at least two copies of your data
- Make sure that at least one of your backups is stored in a secure location
- Use at least two distinct copy formats: online (C) and external storage unit (A/B), guaranteeing that you can always access data in case one of those formats fails
- Test whether data access and recovery are easy and quick, protecting yourself against data breaches, ransomware attacks and other incidents without compromising your activity
