Anything I.T. and the Geek Collective provide an I.T. Support service and Website design to business clients in Plymouth, South West of the UK.
Considerations, Types of Backups, Implications, Assessments, Restoration
Note: A PDF version of this post can be found here: Automated Backup Service This document will likely be updated from time to time so information is up-to-date and current.
This post contains questions which are not necessarily answered here but provide an opportunity to create a proper plan to keep company data safe. Liaising with Anything I.T. to do this can save time, money and stress.
Considerations
Consider the following when planning a backup strategy.
- Is an ‘on-premises’ backup sufficient?
- Is a manual periodic/random backup taken off-site enough?
- Does the nature of the business expect any off-site backups (such as remote backups) to be encrypted?
- How much space in Gigabytes will be required (see Assessments below)? Think future-proofing an increase in disk space.
- Choice of types of backups (see below Types of Backups).
- How often should a backup be taken?
- Who oversees/performs the backups? If it is an external company, do you get reports from them regarding current status?
- Consider hard copy documents such as signed paperwork. Should these be scanned and saved into a folder that gets backed up?
- Is there sensitive information within the files being backed up? Does your company GDPR policy take into account the remote storage of this information?
- Are files containing sensitive information stored in a secure Cloud location such as Dropbox, OneDrive for Business or Google Drive?
- If a file is corrupted somehow (perhaps by virus or computer malfunction), how do you plan to re-create that file? Or is that not possible?
- Are email mailboxes backed up? Typically, Gmail, Office 365 is not backed up by the provider
Types of Backups
Essentially, there are three types of backups:
A Full Backup
This backup when it runs, backups up every file that is selected in the backup job. Backups can often take a long time since we are backing up every file regardless of whether that file has changed since the last backup.
Incremental Backup
This backup job backs up every file that has been changed or newly created since the last Incremental backup. This kind of backup is faster to implement but it can take longer to find specific files if lost since they could be anywhere amongst any number of Incremental backups.
Differential Backup
A differential backup backs up change or newly created files since the last full backup.
Implications
Valuable Resources
What is a valuable document, file, email, or resource in this description? Usually, one that would cause either a little distress at losing the resource (the effort to re-create it) or significant distress due to the nature of the resource (a signed PDF contract document, or an accounting database for instance) and/or a significant effort to recreate the resource. Often, the information contained in this files is a ‘one-off’ such as that might be contained in an email or a signed document.
Re-creating the resource
The implication of re-creating a resource can have a negative impact on a business. Firstly, by way of the time spent to re-create the resource, and secondly, by way of the negative impact on the individual’s well-being (“I already created this document, it took me two days”).
In the case of loss of an accounting database, then this loss would be significant and the knock-on effect on the business should not be underestimated.
Assessments
To come up with a purchase plan for Anything I.T. remote backup, we need to find out how much disk space the client is currently using for valuable documents
- How much disk space usage per user will be required?
- Which are the most valuable files/folders (and where they are located)?
- Record which are sensitive files/folders (and where they are located)
- Are email mailboxes being backed up?
Restoration
Who and How?
- How are restores carried out?
- Who provides this service?
- Is there an additional cost in the case of disaster recovery?
Anything I.T. carries out the restoration of individual lost or corrupted files as part of the monthly cost of the service (see price list or quote provided).
Disaster Recovery
In the case of a disaster (complete catastrophic loss of data), there is a charge of £75 (as at Feb 2020) per hour to recover. For up-to-date pricing, please refer to our price list.
Any questions?
Contact us at Anything I.T. on the details below:
Email: support@anythingit.net
Phone: 01752 422954
Note: A PDF version of this post can be found here: Automated Backup Service This document will likely be updated from time to time so information is up-to-date and current.