If your organization has poor network security, you could fall victim to a cyberattack or data breach.
These invasions can cause extended network downtime that lead to productivity and efficiency issues and cost organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair their network.
Additionally, sensitive data can be corrupted or compromised during an attack. If your organization does not back up its data regularly, you may end up losing this data permanently.
Data backups can also keep your data safe during equipment and network failures, human errors, and natural disasters.
Coeo understands how important data backup is and has helped thousands of organizations with their data backup to ensure their data is safe and does not get lost when cyberattacks or disasters occur.
By the end of this article, you will understand what a data backup plan is, its key components, and whether your organization should implement this type of strategy.
What is a data backup plan?
A data backup plan is a strategy designed to ensure that data is regularly backed up and copied. This enables organizations to make copies of the data to ensure it is secure were data breaches or cyberattacks to occur.
A data backup plan also ensures that data is backed up and safe during natural disasters or human error. Data backup plans can be essential to businesses ensuring continuity and the protection of sensitive data.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about data backup plans or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
The key components of a data backup plan
Understanding what a data backup plan is can help your organization safely protect its data. However, it is also important to understand its key components so you can prepare and create your own plan.
Some of the key components of a data backup plan include:
Data assessment
The first step in creating a data backup plan is assessing the data within your network and planning the objectives you are looking to accomplish.
It is important to take inventory of the data within your organization including information in your databases, applications, files, and system configurations.
It is also important to categorize this data and determine which data is critical to business operations and the success of your organization and prioritize it.
This ensures that sensitive and other important data is backed up first so that your organization has copies of it in case it is compromised or corrupted during an attack. From there you prioritize which data should be backed up first.
Determine a backup schedule
Another key component of creating a data backup plan is building a backup schedule. First, your organization should determine how often data should be backed up depending on the criticality of the data. This can be done on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Additionally, it is important to decide the type of data backup to perform whether it be full, incremental, or differential backups.
A full backup occurs when all data is backed up and sent to another location, an incremental backup occurs when only data that has changed since the last backup took place is moved to another location and a differential backup occurs when only data that has changed from the last full backup is moved to another location.
It is important to schedule which types of data backup you would like to perform and how often they should happen depending on the criticality of the data.
Backup methods
When performing data backups, the two main types are manual and automatic. A manual data backup is performed internally by your IT staff while an automatic data backup uses software to schedule these data backups.
It is important to determine which type of data backup you want to perform so you can plan your strategy accordingly.
If your organization has an IT team and would like to dictate when and how your data gets backed up, performing manual backups may be the right decision.
However, if you do not have internal IT expertise or do not want to risk human error, performing automatic data backups may be the best decision for your organization.
Is a data backup plan the right decision for your organization?
Now you understand what a data backup plan is and its key components. However, it is important to understand whether a data backup plan is the right decision for your organization to determine whether you should create one.
If your organization is worried about data in your network being breached, corrupted, or compromised, creating a data backup plan may be the right decision to ensure that data is still available to access even when a breach occurs.
Additionally, if your organization has legal requirements placed on your industry related to data protection, implementing a data backup plan may be the right decision to remain compliant and avoid legal ramifications.
However, if your data is managed and stored in a data center by your network or cloud provider, you may not need to implement a data backup plan since your data is already managed for you.
Determining whether a data backup plan is a good decision for your organization
Now you understand what a data backup plan is, its key components, and whether a data backup plan is the right decision for your organization. This will help you determine if you should create and implement a data backup plan.
No organization can afford to experience cyberattacks and data breaches that cause sensitive data to be compromised or corrupted. This can also cause legal consequences as a result of violations related to industry requirements.
Creating and implementing a data backup plan may help your organization avoid these issues. Understanding what a data backup plan is and whether it is right for your organization will help you determine how best to execute this strategy.
Coeo understands how important data is and has helped thousands of organizations with their data backup strategies enabling them to back up their data more easily from disasters and cyberattacks.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about data backup plans or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you understand what a data backup plan is and its key components, read this article to learn how disaster recovery can help your organization back up its data and maintain business continuity:
