Backup & Disaster Recovery

What’s the impact of you losing access to the technology in your business? Server failure, loss of internet, accidental deletion are all common and can be catastrophic for your business.

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Is your data backed up? How long will it take you to recover?

We often see that businesses within Manchester, as well as surrounding areas such as Salford, Altrincham and Rochdale, don’t have adequate measures in place for backup and disaster recovery. As a result, when instances occur and data or access to technology is lost, they suffer consequences that can be detrimental to their business. Yet many businesses think that it will never happen to them and are therefore unprepared. As Manchester-based IT specialists we’re passionate about helping small to medium-sized businesses put a disaster recovery plan in place and ensure that they have the right backup systems.

Since we began to offer backup and disaster recovery services to businesses in Manchester and across the North West, we have helped numerous businesses to implement an effective disaster recovery solution. In addition to this, we’ve also helped companies to understand the importance of these measures and plans. As with any of our services, we pride ourselves on excellent customer service – we understand that every business we work with has different needs and varying levels of understanding, so we completely tailor our approach to suit them. From the first enquiry you make, you’ll be working with a friendly team that puts your best interests first.

If you’re based in Manchester City Centre or any surrounding areas within Greater Manchester, we’d be happy to assist you in creating a backup and disaster recovery plan. If you’re interested, please get in touch.

What Is Backup & Recovery?

In IT, a backup, or a data backup, refers to a copy of data that is stored elsewhere. Then, this copy can be used to restore the original, if a data loss event occurs. A proper backup copy will be stored in a completely separate system or medium, such as a disk storage system or tape drive, away from the original data. This then mitigates the risk of a data loss incident due to software or hardware failure. Data failures can occur as a result of data corruption, accidental deletion of data caused by human error, or malicious attacks, such as a virus., malware, or ransomware attack. Weather-related events can also occur and cause data loss, hence why some businesses decide to have copies of their data stored in remote locations.

In the case of computer files, a backup then refers to copies of the original files that you have on your external hard drive, desktop or laptop. You may also hear this process get referred to as ‘operational recovery’. These backup solutions are essential for business continuity in the wake of an incident. For these disaster recovery strategies to be effective, backups should be made consistently and on a regular basis. This minimises the amount of data that could be lost between backups; the greater the amount of time between backups, the greater amount of data that could be lost.

On the other hand, disaster recovery is a business’s strategy that’s in place to help them recover after an incident. This tends to involve how they will regain access and restore functionality to their technologies and infrastructure. These disaster recovery processes will be executed in the event of data loss, but how this data is lost can vary. Disaster recovery is essential for business continuity and minimising the recovery times following the loss of data or access to infrastructure.

The Difference Between Disaster Recovery & Backups

The terms are often used interchangeably, yet there are significant differences. Understanding what backups and disaster recovery are can help you ensure that you’ve got a strategy in place to avoid losing any data or access to your business technologies. Backups are the copying of data and, although it sounds like an easy process, it can often be complicated as there are multiple ways to perform a backup, and backups can be in different forms. That’s exactly why we provide support to help businesses with their backups. That way, you can have peace of mind that your backups are effective and successful.

A backup solution is only helpful when you understand the strategy that’s in place. This is exactly where disaster recovery plays a part. Disaster recovery is a plan that’s in place to protect a company from data loss and the subsequent effects. These plans aim to maintain business continuity and functions throughout the entire process – in other words, before, during and after an incident.

Disaster recovery tends to be used as an umbrella term, which encompasses backups. Ultimately, the main difference between backup and recovery is breadth and actions. A backup refers to the copying of data, but disaster recovery refers to the entire strategy that is in place for responding to, and recovering from, an incident. Part of this will involve putting the backups into action.

All our customers backups are managed and monitored meaning failed backups create a ticket with a service level agreement. If your backups do fail we know about them instantly. Could you afford to lose a day of output, how about a week or a even a month? The costs could be astronomical, and in some cases the work might just be irreplaceable. As a business we acquire, on average, five new clients per month. Our thorough audits have uncovered some alarming findings that could put our clients’ businesses in serious jeopardy. Read on to have a look at our research and how we can make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

The Importance Of Backup Strategies In A Business Continuity Plan

Access to your data, without restrictions

Storing your data in different locations means that the information is protected in the event of data breaches, power outages or any other unfortunate event. On the other hand, if you store your data in one location, you risk losing it and being unable to recover it. This can be detrimental to your business, in terms of your operations but also your reputation too. Online backup services are especially beneficial because you can access your data at any time, regardless of your location.

Extra protection & peace of mind

Besides the practical benefits of disaster recovery, it also gives you peace of mind that your data is protected. You don’t have to worry about losing your data and dealing with the issues that it can create – if an unfortunate event takes place, then there’s no need to worry. Cloud backups can be particularly helpful in protecting your data against the likes of natural disasters or flooding, as there’s no hardware required.

Protection for your customers

Data protection doesn’t just provide benefits for your business, but it also helps to protect your customers too. If you store information for your customers, then you should be able to recover this in the event of any data loss. If you do not back up your customer data, then your business will certainly suffer in the event of a loss of data.

Protection for your business

The growth and the success of your business will largely depend on the information that you store that relates to your operations and processes. By backing up this data, you can ensure that a loss of data doesn’t affect the success of your business. Instead of losing this data and therefore losing the opportunity to grow your business, you can easily retrieve the copies and pick up where you left off.

What To Include In Your Disaster Recovery Strategy

Your backup strategy, and what’s included, will largely depend on your business and what you see as a priority. However, regardless of your sector and business model, there are a few things that are necessities when it comes to your backup plan. These are:

Financial data: One of the main things to backup on a regular basis is your financial data, such as accounting records, revenue records, expense receipts, bank statements, and everything in between. As a business, it’s likely that you’ll complete transactions on a daily basis, so you may even choose to backup your data hourly, or every few hours. Having a backup of this data usually falls under compliance regulations, either within your company or the sector more broadly.

Admin documents: When considering what to backup, you might completely disregard your general administrative records and documents. However, these can have a huge impact on your business, if they were to be destroyed or lost. For example, if you lost your business plans, marketing materials and sales information, think about how much of an effect that would have on your organisation and its functionality. This also extends to the likes of your insurance policies and patents. There should be copies of these documents both in an onsite and offsite location.

Personnel records: Your company’s personnel records should be secure and available whenever they’re needed. These records should pertain to employees past and present, and they will include the likes of payroll records and employment taxes. These records should be backed up regularly – if you make changes daily, then consider backing these records up on a daily basis.

The Impact Of Losing Access To Your Technology & Data

Disruption to productivity and normal business operations

If you lose access to your data and technology, this can lead to unplanned downtime. Then, the first consequence your company will suffer from is disruption to productivity, which is ultimately the backbone for your business operations. Your productivity suffers because you can’t access the files and the data you need, but also because your time is taken up dealing with the aftermath of the event that’s taken place to result in data loss. These consequences of downtime are often overlooked, yet the Strategic Resource Institute figures that organisations that cannot resume operation within ten days of an incident are unlikely to survive, showing the importance of backup and disaster recovery.

Exposure of information

In a data loss incident, sensitive information is likely to be exposed. This sensitive information may contain your customer’s email addresses and payment details, as well as important information that pertains to your business operations and important details about your organisation and employees. This data can be valuable to cyber criminalists and can therefore lead to severe consequences for your business and your customers. It’s this exposure of information that can cause your reputation to suffer.

Legal action and financial penalties

In the event of customer data or employee records being compromised, your business may face financial penalties and legal action. The Information Commissioner’s Office can enforce fines of up to £500,000 if they find that your business has not complied with the Data Protection Act. As well as this, the individuals that have been affected by the data breach may also decide to take legal action against your company.

Loss of credibility

In the 21st Century, news travels fast. Whilst many of the stories to hit the headlines involve large, well-known corporations, small businesses affected by a loss of data can also experience a loss of credibility too, especially if customer data is compromised. Customers want to trust the companies they use, and if their data is compromised, then they may decide to take their business elsewhere. Similarly, the negative publicity that your business suffers from can mean that your reputation is severely damaged. Trying to repair your reputation following a data loss incident can be challenging, time-consuming and expensive.

Complete business closure

For many small businesses, data loss can lead to the complete breakdown of their company. For many, the cost of legal proceedings or trying to repair their business is all too much, and eventually, their business will close for good – this is perhaps the main reason why backup strategies and an effective disaster recovery process are essential.

How Everything Tech Can Help: Our Backup Services & Disaster Recovery Service

As with any of our services, we know that when it comes to business continuity strategies and disaster recovery planning, every approach must be tailored to each business. To put it simply, a “one size fits all” approach simply doesn’t work. That’s why we get to know our clients well before we decide on the services that they need. We’ll get to know your team and what you have in place already, and then we can use our expertise accordingly to build on that.

We’ll make all the relevant assessments to ensure that we add value and significantly improve things for your business. This usually involves an audit and a review document. Then, we’ll use our skills and experience to implement effective strategies and hassle-free technology that are designed to backup critical applications and data. There are several types of backup methods, but we pride ourselves on using simple yet effective processes that are tailored to your company and your existing business processes.

How It Works

Now, you might be wondering how exactly our backup and disaster recovery services work. Ultimately, we do the hard work for you behind the scenes, but here’s a quick overview of what to expect from the service:

Your local device takes a backup of your entire system at regular intervals.
Then, it will constantly update, validate and store image-based backup files. These will be saved as VMDKs, which contain the files and software operating systems from your computer.
You will receive emailed screenshot verifications regularly, so you know that each backup is viable.
If your system fails, then the backup device will recognise the error. Then, a virtual copy of the system can be booted immediately from the backup.
You can access your entire backup instantly from any other machine. It can then be run on a local device or in the cloud.
Regular backups will continue to take place.

Sectors We Support

Accountants

All accountancy firms handle sensitive information, so it’s important to protect this information from incidents where the data can be lost. This might include natural disasters, security breaches or accidental deletions. With the right backup software or strategy, you can rest assured that if your systems are down, you can still recover this information and be back up and running in no time!

Architects

Data loss can be damaging to your business, yet having a regular backup mitigates the associated risks and cuts the downtime that you experience from days to minutes!

Engineering

In an information-heavy sector just like engineering, there’s a lot of vital information that could be lost if your servers are down, you suffer from cyber attacks, or there’s accidental deletion. Your business continuity management should always be planned and executed with disaster recovery in mind, and our services will ensure that, in a data loss incident, you’ll be back to business as usual in no time.

Healthcare

Businesses and organisations within the healthcare industry handle lots of sensitive information pertaining to their patients and customers. In this industry, suffering a data loss can be detrimental, not just to your business reputation, but to your customers or patients too. With that in mind, it’s important to protect your data and systems with the right backup software or strategy.

Manufacturing

If you’re in a period of downtime due to data or technology loss, this can be especially damaging to your detail-oriented projects or volume work. If you prepare for power outages, technical failures, cyber attacks or anything else that can lead to data loss, then you can mitigate the impact of these incidents.

Solicitors & Lawyers

Getting back up and running when you’re working with clients is essential. That’s why having the right backup and disaster recovery strategies in place is particularly important. When you have access to a copy of your data and systems, then you can get to work again as soon as possible.

Looking For Backup Services & Disaster Recovery Planning? Get In Touch Today

Evidently, reliable backup services and disaster recovery are vital for any business – it’s important to prepare for the worst and have the necessary measures in place, so you can get back up and running at the earliest opportunity. We know that every company will have different needs and processes, which is exactly why we tailor our services to suit you. If you’re interested in backup and disaster recovery services, so that you can maintain a great reputation and keep your business afloat if the worst were to happen, then we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with our team to discuss your needs.