Tested Your Data Backup Plan?

Data Backup Plan

Testing your backup and disaster recovery plan (BCDR) is inevitable. One famous quote says you are only as good as your last backup. Every business today relies on data coming from their information technology that covers every aspect of their operations. The data moves from one department to another and exchanges among employers, employers, and clients — making it a viable commodity for any business.

Most people already have their data backup set up but rarely test them out. It would be best to keep these assets secure against any breaches and cyber attacks rampant with current advanced technology. It enables a business to maintain its reputation and earn trust from its consumers. The present technological world is very volatile, and organizations need the best security measures to keep them safe. Failure may land in data loss, file corruption, potentially business shutdown, or hardware malfunction.

From research, many businesses are still misinformed about the severity of data reaches:

• About 46% of small and medium-sized businesses have no data backup and recovery plans set in place.
• Businesses across the globe lose up to $300000 every hour of downtime in their systems.
• 23% of enterprises never carry out data backup plan tests

Carrying out a BCDR is non-negotiable for businesses to enable adequate protection of their operations.

Why You Need To Carry Out BCDR

Recovery plans help businesses in times of disaster. These may be incidents like fire, flood, or various types of data breaches like a hack. However, that is not enough to be prepared against these attacks. Lacking a proper testing mechanism is equivalent to investing in lifeboats that don’t float. Having ongoing testing procedures helps determine that your network is effective and will not fail if a disaster happens.

Therefore, businesses create actionable recovery tests akin to nearly any disaster that they may face. The goal here is to develop and reinforce the steps needed for data backup and recovery in times of catastrophe. It is not easy to survive some hacks, and at this time, the IT department is overwhelmed, and the business will go down the drain. The panic is real, and uncertainty or loss of revenue results in more chaos.

Steps for Testing the Recovery Plan

Testing occurs due to various scenarios, yet there is a myth that there has to be an outage to test their recovery plan. The notion is far from the truth and can be very harmful to business. Companies need to create actionable plans and execute them to recreate any dangerous scenarios without any fully-fledged attacks. These can occur as tabletop exercises on chosen weekends to check your systems.

The tabletop strategy is seamless and helps to look out for breaks and weaknesses in your plan. You can also take a step further and try to log in to the cloud and check out the vulnerability of your data. The process is easy, and a day over the weekend is enough to make a successful tabletop strategy.

When you feel the system needs a full inspection, you may opt for full-blown exercise. Here you may need to invest some resources and time to enable a complete sweep over your data backup systems. It is critical to prevent any downtime and ensure that the data backup recovery plan is effective.

Let’s look at some key takeaways to consider when carrying out a BCDR.

Test Your System Regularly

Frequent testing backup strategies help you to prevent risks and failures that occur during disasters and breaches. Regardless of their volume of data, businesses of any size have to carry out these frequent rules. The challenge is that most companies don’t perform regular testing mechanisms, leaving them susceptible to attack.

Many companies test their systems yearly, while some avoid them altogether. There are various times when allocating testing time can be daunting due to various business operations. However, experts recommend that the ongoing test should occur quarterly. The test frequency should be substantially higher in mega-corporations with massive data volumes, making them potential targets.

Follow Compliance Standards

Every business is subject to compliance standards. These standards set by government bodies like PCI, HIPAA, and DoD have specific policies regarding how you maintain and protect your data. Failure to follow these protocols lands the business with huge fines, penalties, and, worse, business closure.

It would be best to focus on using a data backup plan to work following these policies. Meeting these policies’ specific requirements and storage capabilities can be very challenging since they change with time. Therefore, update your recovery plan by checking the current policies that apply to our business that will help prevent disasters and attacks and in compliance.

Make BCDR a Priority

Various companies disregard BCDR until it is too late, and they are facing the worst scenarios that could happen to a data backup system. You can avoid this by making testing a priority and scheduling it regularly. You can set dates when the company carries out tabletop exercises and a full-blown strategy every once in a while. Also, emphasize using regular testing with predefined plans to ensure every aspect of the system follows government policies.

Navigating through a disaster can be challenging without prior testing. IT teams should be ready and have explicit policies and procedures to follow in an emergency. The tests enable your IT team to remain confident in their services and always prepared to tackle any catastrophe.

Let Colorado Computer Support handle your BCDR

Having a disaster recovery plan in place is not enough during times of distress. On the other hand, finding the right company with the knowledge and resources to perform certain testing obligations is not easy. It would help if you had a team of professionals available 24 hours a day to test and maintain your data systems.

At Colorado Computer Support, we provide fully managed backup solutions for any business. We assist clients in adhering to specific compliance requirements while having efficient backup recovery plans.

Learn more about how Colorado Computer Support can help you with data protection strategy and request a quick, risk-free consultation.  Contact us today or call (719) 439-0599