Backup Techniques and Disaster Recovery Strategies
While some data loss is unavoidable, how you respond to business disruption or data breach can have a major impact on your bottom line, or even your survival. With security threats coming from all directions―from malicious malware and viruses to human error and natural disasters―data loss is not a matter of if, but when.
To ensure your business can recover its mission-critical data and restore operations in the event of a disaster, you need a consistent, proactive approach to backup and recovery built around sound principles:
Reap the Benefits of Smart Planning
Today’s threat risks are pervasive across companies of all sizes. Systems crash, buildings catch on fire, and people make mistakes. A single data breach could have major financial ramifications. Those costs can skyrocket for industries subject to strict governmental regulations, such as healthcare and finance. That’s reliable backup and recovery should be positioned as a top priority in your long-term business strategy.
At BACS, we believe in taking a proactive approach to data loss and recovery. We start with an in-depth analysis of your business needs. What level of data protection does your business require? What storage methods do you currently employ? What data recovery processes do you currently have in place? These details provide the framework for creating a carefully balanced and smartly executive backup and recovery plan.
BACS is well-versed in the latest backup and recovery practices to safeguard your business systems and recover vital data in the event of a disaster. We work with you to identify gaps and weaknesses in your existing strategy, and evaluate the full scope of available options, from cloud-based disaster recovery to data retention policies and procedures.
Our best practice approach helps you prioritize business needs and downtime tolerance. We can help keep your businesses up and running when systems fail or a network is breached―quickly identifying and correcting vulnerabilities and restoring data and systems with minimal disruption.
BACS provides backup and recovery services across several core areas:
- Cloud data replication
- Business continuity planning
- Data recovery services
- Governance, risk, and compliance
- Threat detection and vulnerability assessment
- Asset protection and data privacy
- Data retention policies and procedures
Mitigate the Impact of the Unexpected
While many of today’s data storage and backup techniques have proven highly reliable, the right infrastructure is only part of the solution. Effective recovery of vital business data requires intelligent planning, sound policies, and technology know-how.
In today’s mission-critical business environments, users expect minimal disruption, zero data loss, and recovery times that are calculated in minutes rather than hours. This puts immense pressure on IT teams to restore systems quickly and efficiently.
With the increasingly hybrid nature of today’s IT infrastructures, your recovery approach should include both virtual and physical assets and clearly define your tolerance for downtime. Should an outage occur, you need to have confidence in your recovery plan to know exactly how long it will take for the business to be back online―with systems restored and critical data intact.
That’s where BACS can help. With more than 20 years of experience helping companies bolster their IT security, detect performance gaps, and plan for disasters, BACS is ideally positioned to help ease the stress and burden of backup and recovery planning and testing.
At the heart of a solid backup and recovery plan is a guiding document that defines specific procedures and processes to be carried out in event of a disaster. This detailed action plan factors in multiple scenarios with defined steps to mitigate the impact of an event and enable critical business systems and processes to be recovered and restored quickly and efficiently.
But a written plan by itself does not guarantee a rapid recovery. Communication and training, along with following proper disaster recovery procedures and protocols, are essential elements of an effective recovery program. It’s vital that every stakeholder impacted by an event clearly understands their responsibilities and the role they play in the recovery effort.
Gain an Edge with Expert Guidance
Finding time to focus on the routine functions of backup and recovery is increasingly difficult in today’s fast-paced IT environment. That’s where the knowledge and guidance from an expert consultant like BACS can help.
Our experts will evaluate the performance, capabilities, and limitations of your existing infrastructure and outline your best options for improvement. We depict possible disaster situations and analyze the potential impact on business operations.
Our consultants will work with you to:
- Define downtime tolerance. For each set of applications, we’ll help determine the acceptable recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) based on your unique business needs. Prioritizing applications by level of importance will help accelerate the recovery process and ensure the right level of availability and recovery for each system.
- Manage sensitive data. A key element of your recovery plan is defining the operational and management procedures for safeguarding confidential or sensitive information. The procedures should define and describe how sensitive data will be managed, secured, and accessed once the plan has been initiated.
- Optimize backup frequency. Depending on the nature of your business and your unique operational demands, you may need to increase the frequency of your backups. When more frequent and rapid backups are required, we will work with you to create the optimal approach, including implementing more advanced techniques, such as block level incremental (BLI) backups.
- Protect endpoints. The rise of the IoT presents unique challenges as many of today’s connected devices contain valuable data that may be solely stored on them. if the endpoint device has a failure, is lost or is stolen and is not properly backed up, the data on these devices will be lost forever. The good news is that endpoint protection is more practical than ever thanks to proactive planning and new automated backup techniques.
- Ensure Scalability. It’s important to invest in backup and recovery infrastructure that can grow with your business. If you are starting small, we’ll work with you to implement a solution that handles your backups automatically. As your business grows, we’ll work with you to add tools and implement processes to manage backup and recovery in more complex IT environments.
- Use the cloud wisely. While the cloud offers efficient backup and recovery options, it’s essential that you take a calculated, strategic approach when moving data to the cloud, whether it’s owning infrastructure, renting, or adopting a hybrid approach. BACS will work with you to determine optimum price points, evaluate storage media options, and choose the best course of action for your unique needs.
- Ensure proper data retention. New data protection and privacy regulations require organizations to retain and segregate specific data types. In some instances, they also require that you delete only certain components of customer data and continue to store other elements. We’ll work with you to make sure your data is stored in the proper format and that any required deletions are properly executed.
- Test your plan regularly. Your plan should outline the steps, methods, and the frequency in which your backup and recovery processes and procedures will be tested. Infrequent testing can result in recovery failure and lost data, exposing your company to substantial risk. It’s better to uncover any issues early on rather than have them emerge during a crisis.
BACS’s Cybersecurity Services
Align Priorities with a Clear Strategy
Protecting your critical business systems is not only a security issue; it is a central business concern. It requires smart investments in technology and resources to address an increasingly complex threat landscape. That’s where BACS can help.
With our comprehensive portfolio of backup and recovery and business continuity solutions, our team can evaluate your existing IT environment and create a solution that meets your specific needs and budget requirements. By assessing the potential impact on business systems, you can prioritize infrastructure and applications and define your precise uptime requirements.
We start with a systematic approach designed to determine what systems and applications are most vital to your business, and then implementing corrective and preventative measures that align with your objectives. We take into account core infrastructure needs, risk tolerances, and performance requirements as part of a comprehensive, carefully balanced plan.
Our in-depth security and business continuity analysis is designed to uncover weaknesses and pinpoint areas for targeted investment to improve. We evaluate your infrastructure and IT assets and blend proven techniques with cutting-edge practices to create a plan that achieves an optimum level of protection and risk tolerance.
With BACS, you get:
- A detailed analysis of your current disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities
- Managed recovery capabilities for both physical and virtual environments
- Quick failover reducing risk of revenue loss and production downtime.
- Ongoing testing and reporting to ensure continuous recoverability.
- Customized solutions that carefully align with your business and compliance needs.
Don’t Wait Until it’s Too Late
Businesses today are under intense pressure created by an ever-growing threat environment, a proliferation of new compliance mandates, and limited IT budgets to implement new techniques and strategies. Meanwhile, as backup and storage processes migrate to the cloud, the benefits of cloud recovery need to be evaluated and balanced against security risks and potential vulnerabilities.
At BACS, we believe in taking a proactive approach against data loss. Our solutions are designed to align with your business priorities, objectives, and budget requirements while giving you the peace of mind that your data remains protected and secure.
With our flexible managed services offering, we integrate the entire process of backup and recovery into a single service. Storage, design, testing, and around-the-clock proactive backup monitoring allow you to keep an eye on performance without having to manage the task yourself.
Our expert teams of consultants will work with you to:
- Make strategic decisions. We carefully evaluate your backup and recovery needs, answering key questions about long-term growth, changes in your data needs, and shifts in business and market strategy.
- Strengthen access controls. Strong access control and user authentication methods help ensure only approved users can obtain access to your networks and data.
- Use proactive security scanning. Vulnerability monitoring provides insight into potential security gaps and other weaknesses in your network and enterprise defenses.
- Ensure business continuity. BACS will assess your current environment and develop a disaster recovery plan that safeguards infrastructure and data and protects against ongoing threats.
- Define policies and procedures. We work with you to define and implement backup and recovery policies and practices based on your tolerance risk, business requirements or mandates specific to your particular market.
Contact us to learn about our Cloud Strategy and Implementation Services
Our experts will evaluate the performance of your legacy infrastructure and outline your best options. We depict possible disaster situations and analyze the potential impact on business operations.
Preparing for a potential disaster out into the future might not seem vital today—particularly while managing an escalating number of IT tasks. However, making the effort to build an reliable backup and recovery plan will pay dividends far beyond the initial investment.
From earthquakes and fires, to ransomware and theft, the potential for data loss can come from all directions. When it comes to safeguarding your vital assets, you can’t afford to wait. A data breach in some form is inevitable. The question is, will you be able to recover?
For more information on our data backup and recovery solutions and services, please contact us.
