The issues with not following a set of rules…
Backing up your all-important Data isn’t something you should disregard; you need to ensure that your critical information will survive any unpredictable circumstance.
Too many Businesses & individuals have suffered from data loss following system failure, file corruption, accidental deletion, or even by natural disaster! Although most common of all in today’s world, will be loss through you becoming a victim to a random cyber-attack.
You may well take a copy of your files and save them to an external disk or dump a copy in the Cloud, but is that a rigorous enough backup to protect your business from total loss?
Which rule is best to apply?
Welcome the 3-2-1 Backup rule; a rigorous practice to cover nearly all eventualities of data loss and requirement for recovery.
An easy-to-remember structure for keeping all your private details and company data defended & recoverable should the worst happen.
At all times, keep at least THREE copies of your up-to-date data.
You can’t predict data loss, or worse, a cyber-attack. Having at least three independent backup copies of your data helps to best mitigate the risk of loss. One copy being your original file data (on your server/s or cloud storage), with a further two duplicate copies being stored in alternative locations as your backup sources.
Store TWO backup copies on unique devices or storage media.
Nothing lasts a lifetime, (asides plastic). We must all remember that storage devices will suffer a failure at some point in their life, or if they are connected to your network at the point of a cyber-attack striking, may well become infected and suffer loss too.
Therefore, to maximise peace of mind, you should always have multiple copies on unique devices, and they shouldn’t be the same product, with slim odds of corrupting at the same time.
Keep at least ONE backup copy offsite.
A simple, yet very important rule. If you follow the first two rules, you’re on the right track, but if you don’t have an offsite backup, you’re not entirely defended.
You’ve undoubtedly guessed why, if your external hard drives, disks or cloud storage are all connected to your system, whilst it corrupts, or gets attacked, it’s all infected & your multiple points of recovery are lost in one fell swoop.
Whereas if you’ve got a copy offsite, you will still have a recovery point to restore your critical systems and retrieve all your information should all else fail.
Why follow the 3-2-1 rule?
Given the rise in Cyber-attacks, with Ransomware hitting businesses left, right and centre, I can’t see any reason you wouldn’t want to protect your critical data.
With people often underestimating the likelihood of having a natural disaster, suffering from accidental deletion or corruption, or even the victim of a hacker. The stakes have never been so high, with your business on the line, backup is fundamental to protect livelihoods.
When applying the 3-2-1 rule, don’t forget to use a robust trusted solution, which is where we come in.
Want to get the best solution for your business?
At iTeam, we take a security first approach to technology – ensuring our client’s systems are best protected.
If you have any concerns, questions or simply want to explore how to better secure your business, please do get in touch with the team for a FREE demonstration, consultation to explore how exposed your business might actually be and identify actions to take.
To book a consultation or to arrange a further discussion, please get in touch via our form below, call 03330 507 690 or email Chris on cwatson@iteam.co.uk.