Businesses are subjecting to cybercrime daily, protecting yourself from this crime is vital if you want your business to succeed. On average a business that suffers a data breach or is a victim of cybercrime will go out of business within 6 months.

There isn’t one thing that you can do to protect yourself from cybercrime as it’s a series of small steps. However, with that said, backing up your business data will allow you some protection and it will protect you from Ransomware attacks.  

Here are some of the best ways you can backup your business data.

Burning your data to disk

An old school way of protecting your data is to burn it to a disk. The best part of burning to a disk too is that you can take data from all sources and put it on a media which is cheap and can be duplicated multiple times too.

You can even take your old VHS tapes and convert them to DVD. To do so you will need specialist equipment, the easier way is to use a service such as Digital Converters to do it for you.  

For regular data though most PC’s will have a drive that will allow you to copy your data onto a CD or DVD. If you don’t and you want to backup your data this way you can buy an external CD burner online for cheap.

There are limitations when it comes to using this method such as it can be slow if you are transferring a lot of data and there are size limitations to so you will need multiple disks for larger files which can get lost over time.

Cloud Computing and Storage

One of the best ways to store and backup your large data is through cloud computing. Websites such as Dropbox offer storage for a very affordable rate and use content management systems that are easy to navigate and use.

Cloud computing and storage has come on a lot over the last few years and because of this pricing is very affordable and a few terabytes of data should cost around $60 a year which is much cheaper than physical hardware devices.

One of our favourite methods of backing up data is cloud storage.

Making physical copies

Not all of your data sources will lend themselves to being physically copied, but if you do have files that can be printed out and stored you should do so. Files such as contracts or legal documents could be printed out and stored in another location for ultimate security.

If you don’t have another location to store your data at, many businesses choose to rent out a self storage unit. Self storage units are once again affordable and they offer you more security. Most storage locations will be under constant CCTV and have multiple security layers too.

Having your documents stored in a different location also helps if there is an accident such as a fire in your office.

External hard drives

A cheap, easy and effective way of making backups to your business data is by having multiple external hard drives. External hard drives are relatively cheap and can store terabytes of data.

Some businesses make the mistake of only backing up onto one external hard drive and this is a mistake because if you were to lose that hard drive or if it were to be infected with malware then you would be in a heap of trouble.

It’s very tempting to only use one external hard drive as it does make backing up your data easy, but having multiple backups on different hard drives is going to be the safest option available to you.

When buying a hard drive it can be tempting to go for the cheapest option to save money, but take your time and do some research as you will want a hard drive that is reliable in the long term.

The best practices for backing up your data

Having ways of backing up your data is very important but just making a backup once a year isn’t going to cut it. You will need to put into place a backup procedure so you can follow it every so often.

Firstly you will need to decide on a schedule. How often can you backup your data and how often should you back up your data. Think to yourself how much work could you lose without it affecting your business too much. Could you miss a day, week or month? When you have your answer you should make your backups to accommodate this.

You will then need to decide on how you are going to backup your data. Are you going to use one device or multiple? We recommend using a combination of the above. You could for example backup your data into the cloud daily and then do the same to a physical device such as a USB or external hard drive.

Once you have your schedule and your devices you will then need to decide who at your company is responsible for backing up the data, will this be you or someone you can trust?

When you have all of the above you can then sleep a little easier at night knowing your data is being protected to a much higher level than before and if a disaster were to strike it would only cause minimal disruption to your business and finances.

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