Data loss prevention is the top priority of businesses of all sizes. The global average cost of a data breach increased by 2.6% from 2021 to 2022, reaching $4.35m as opposed to $4.24m, and 43% of victims involved are small businesses, according to Upguard, a cyber resilience company. Regular data backup helps companies restore data smoothly in the event of human errors, cyberattacks, hardware failure, system crashes, and other disasters.
Therefore, having reliable data backups is one of the most preventive and safest measures a small or large business can take to prevent long-term financial damage and reputation hit following a data loss accident.
What is backup?
Data backup is the act of retaining data in a certain manner so that it may be reused in the event of system failure or other special conditions. In everyday life, we frequently require additional keys for our front door and a spare tire for our automobile. These are the embodiments of the backup concept. Data backup is an important aspect of the storage sector and plays an important function in the storage system. Backup is an essential component of an entire IT system. Its importance extends beyond preventing accidental damage to being the best way to save and archive historical data.
In other words, even if the system runs regularly with no data loss or destruction, backup work is still critical since it allows us to query, count, and analyze historical data, as well as archive and store vital information. In general, data backup technology does not ensure the system’s real-time availability. In other words, if an accident occurs, backup technology merely ensures that the data may be retrieved, but the recovery procedure takes time and the system is inaccessible at that time. Backup technology, cluster technology, and disaster recovery technology are irreplaceable in a system of a particular scale, and steady and harmonic collaboration works together to maintain the system’s regular functioning.
Data backup challenges for small businesses
Important data, archives, or historical records stored in computers are critical for both company and individual users. They will create irreparable losses if they are lost carelessly. The painstaking efforts accumulated will be wasted, and the normal operation of enterprises will be severely disrupted, resulting in massive losses in scientific research and production. Enterprise users should implement advanced and effective data backup and prevention methods to assure the regular functioning of manufacturing, sales, and development.
Despite the necessity of data backup, however, not all small companies understand its importance or they do not effectively back up their data because they are cash-strapped or shorthanded, and there are other data backup challenges faced by them.
Necessary initial investment: since the computer system is not used effectively, and the server is expensive to deploy, so the server virtualization that exploits fully the potential of the computer system and hardware resource becomes a popular choice for small businesses, which requires investment in IT team and virtualization platforms.
More vulnerable than large businesses: small businesses are often more vulnerable than large organizations because they don’t have an adequate budget for risk assessment, access control, cyber hygiene, and data security applications, or trial-and-error cost for data loss events, so it could be a lethal incident for them. Additionally, they are easy targets for hackers.
Devoid of a well-rounded backup plan: a comprehensive backup plan necessities professional staff, scientific procedures, and regular tests. Small businesses often rely on experience, online research, and existing IT team, so, slip-ups could emerge in the process, which, might be the crucial steps of data backup.
Poor staff training and awareness: data backup is important and concerns the survival of the business, as we all know. And staff training is the basis of data security for employees and is the most accessible and fragile source of data breaches and phishing attacks. But small businesses are not equipped with such resources for regular training.
Small businesses don’t muddle along over data backup, and they pool all their resources to secure their critical business data, only to find that backup is increasingly complicated and time-consuming. That is where backup software saves the day.
Benefits of data backup software for small businesses
Frequent data backups: virtual machine backup software performs frequent backups for old and new data integration from various systems, higher data availability, and disaster recovery sources. In this way, data is always available and accessible by administrators without the restrictions of locations and time since that backup solutions are either web-based or app-based.
Fewer maintenance costs: although most backup software charges companies, still, it’s cheaper than traditional backup media such as tape and CDs in terms of maintenance costs and long-term benefits, and is worth having for cost-conscious small businesses.
Enhanced data security: backups saved in the backup software server are secured with all kinds of technologies changed with different solutions. Some require ID authentication to log in and operate, others may detect potential threat actors and lock them out for data safety.
Ensured business continuity: backup cannot be divorced from recovery. So, a backup solution often dubs as a disaster recovery tool, which minimizes system downtime, prevents potential legal liability, and keeps business going after any mishap. This brings users peace of mind facing ransomware attacks or any other data loss accidents.
Save time and energy: by automating the backup process, intelligent backup software saves time and energy that the IT team would otherwise spend on slow data backup and retrieval, thus allowing them to focus on their jobs and increasing team productivity.
Compliance with regulations: while laws vary by industry and country, most businesses are demanded to save financial and accounting records for tax reporting purposes. Businesses can respond to requests from the government or auditors with greater agility and confidence if they back up data regularly. Backup software keeps data in a safe and long-term way for small businesses to cope with such requirements easily.
Wrap up
Data backup is the foundation of disaster recovery. It refers to the act of moving all or part of the data sets from the application host’s hard disk or array to other storage media to prevent data loss due to system operation problems or system failures. Cold backup is often performed using built-in or external tape drives in traditional data backup. However, this method can only prevent operation errors and other failures, and its recovery time is also very long. With the ongoing advancement of technology and the tremendous expansion of data, many businesses have begun to adopt network backup. Network backup is often accomplished using professional data storage management software in conjunction with matching hardware and storage devices.
Having reliable backups is a proactive step small businesses can take to prevent data loss catastrophes. Virtual machine backup software helps them to facilitate the process, protects the backups from data exfiltration, and restores data for business continuity.
Vinchin Backup & Recovery is a trustworthy virtualization backup solution compatible with 11 mainstream platforms, for instance, VMware, Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer), Hyper-V, oVirt, and multiple more KVM-based hypervisors. While it supports scheduled data backup, anti-ransomware data protection, 15s instant recovery, cross-platform V2V migration, data archiving to multiple public clouds, and database backup and recovery, the solution with G2 High Performer 2022 nomination offers an affordable price for small businesses.
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