Backup and Recovery

Data are valuable for any size businesses. Loss of data means loss of business profitability. So, proper backup solution should be in place to ensure faster recovery in the event of accidental data deletion or corruption. In information technology, a backup, or a process of backing up, refers to the copying and archiving computer data so it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.
Along with Backup policy, Data retention policy should also be defined with the business. Retention policy defines how long & how many copied of backups are required to retain. Backup location plays a vital role on disaster recovery as well. On site and off site backup procedures has to be defined to prevent total data loss in an event of fire or natural disasters.

Advice:

1. The more important the data that is stored on the computer, the greater is the need for backing up this data.
2. A backup is only as useful as its associated restore strategy. For critical systems and data, the restoration process must be tested.
3. Storing the copy near the original is unwise, since many disasters such as fire, flood, theft, and electrical surges are likely to cause damage to the backup at the same time. In these cases, both the original and the backup medium are likely to be lost.
4. Automated backup and scheduling should be considered, as manual backups can be affected by human error.
5. Incremental backups should be considered to save the amount of storage space and to avoid redundancy.
6. Backups can fail for a wide variety of reasons. A verification or monitoring strategy is an important part of a successful backup plan.
7. Multiple backups on different media, stored in different locations, should be used for all critical information.
8. Backed up archives should be stored in open and standard formats, especially when the goal is long-term archiving. Recovery software and processes may have changed, and software may not be available to restore data saved in proprietary formats.
9. System administrators and others working in the information technology field are routinely fired for not devising and maintaining backup processes suitable to their organization.

Disaster History:

1. On 5 May 1996, during a fire at the headquarters of Credit Lyonnais, a major bank in Paris, system administrators ran into the burning building to rescue backup tapes because they did not have off-site copies. Crucial bank archives and computer data were lost.
2. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has documented 16 instances of stolen or lost backup tapes (among major organizations) in 2005 & 2006. Affected organizations included Bank of America, Ameritrade, Citigroup, and Time Warner.
3. On 3 January 2008, an email server crashed at TeliaSonera, a major Nordic telecom company and internet service provider. It was subsequently discovered that the last serviceable backup set was from 15 December 2007. Three hundred thousand customer email accounts were affected.
4. On 27 February 2011 a software bug on Gmail caused 0.02% of its users to lose all their email. The messages were successfully restored from tape backups hours after the event.

*Source: Wikipedia

ASB IT understands how important Data backup is of our customers and have the process of monitoring, testing and recovery.

ASB IT is reseller of Online Cloud Backup provider - CARBONITE.