What Should I Look For in a Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution?

Businesses are becoming more reliant on their technology and data to gain competitive advantage, but those technologies also make them more vulnerable to disaster. From ransomware attacks and hackers, to insider threats and employee error. There are a host of threats that could do catastrophic damage to your business.

The best way to prevent this damage is with a comprehensive backup and disaster (BDR) system. But, with so many competing solutions on the market, how do you choose the right one for your business?

Are Data Backups Enough for Disaster Recovery?

In order to choose the right protections, you must be clear on the difference between the backup and disaster recovery concepts. Although they’re similar, there are differences between the two.

• Data Backups - Data Backup is copying data from a primary location to a secondary one. This allows you to restore data if it becomes damaged or compromised.
• Disaster Recovery - Disaster recovery involves strategically protecting mission critical data and systems, enabling you to restore operations at your business as quickly as possible with a minimal interruption or impact.

For businesses, data backup is not enough. The difference between the two strategies is the difference between inconvenience and a complete shutdown of your business. Data backups are convenient when, for example, an intern accidentally deletes data. But, disaster recovery is required to have full business resiliency and continuity. To put it simply, you need both.

How to Design the Perfect BDR Solution for Your Business

A solid back-up and disaster recovery solution must be customized to your business needs, covering production data from line of business applications, as well as important databases and communication platforms, like email and collaboration software.

When implementing a BDR solution, there are a few important steps you’ll want to take.

• Identify Sensitive Systems and Assets - While it may sound simple, many businesses will forget to include important data assets in their BDR solution. Do you need data from a mobile device or cloud application in order to conduct business? They should be included in your planning phases or else you’re leaving yourself vulnerable.
• Prioritize Systems and Threats - Naturally, you should place the greatest emphasis on mission critical systems when designing a BDR solution, but you must also analyze the dangers that threaten those systems so you can protect them properly.
• Strategically Combine the Right BDR Technologies - While cloud BDR solutions have become very popular in recent years, they’re not always a silver bullet to perfect disaster recovery. Instead, use the cloud strategically with other off-site and on-site back-up services to ensure optimal disaster recovery.
• Test Your Solution - Testing your BDR solution is a vitally important, but often overlook, aspect of disaster recovery. Without regular testing, a flaw or shortcoming could seriously compromise the success of your solution, yet only 34% of small and mid-sized businesses do so.

Techmedics - Backup & Disaster Recovery Experts

Designing, deploying and testing BDR solutions involves difficult and time-consuming work, which is often far outside the ability of most small and midsized businesses.

For over 20 years, the Techmedics team has helped businesses in a wide variety of industries, including finance, healthcare, legal services, construction, and more take the uncertainty out of disaster recovery.

If you’d like to implement a dependable back-up and disaster recovery solution at your organization, or just have a question about BDR, the Techmedics team is always here to help! Contact us any time at 877-832-4180 (877-TECH-180) or info@techmedics.com to ask us a question or find out more about backup and disaster recovery.

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