A good corporate backup policy is of fundamental importance in order to deal with various types of problems of a technical nature and beyond. All this is even more relevant considering that the IT infrastructure is a potentially weak element by definition: technical failures, security problems or possible human errors are situations in which the presence or absence of a good corporate backup plan can make the difference.
In the face of a critical situation, a malfunction, or unforeseeable events, a good company backup policy is able to reduce downtime, thus guaranteeing services and workstations to get back up & run in the shortest possible time.
Corporate backup: what are the main features
But what are the main features of a good corporate backup plan? First, identify what data deserves to be protected and how often that data needs to be “copied and secured.” Information that is updated more frequently will therefore have to be monitored with a high frequency compared to more static data, thus managing to manage the resources to be dedicated to the backup process better.
The simple “copy” operation does not in itself constitute a good corporate backup. The data must be transferred to areas that can be defined as secure and with precise characteristics. Safe areas both geographically (the corporate backup must foresee possible technical accidents inside the data centers, as well as more extensive calamities such as rendering infrastructures and systems unusable) and in terms of safety in the unfortunate event in which the corporate infrastructure suffers a cyber attack. One last aspect to consider when choosing where to store backups is regulatory type: article 32 of the GDPR provides for precise and non-deferable characteristics regarding the archiving methods.
Enterprise Backup and the Cloud: New Opportunities for Midsize Businesses
Cloud storage spaces can certainly be interesting solutions to evaluate: they allow data to be relocated and have disaster recovery technologies that are probably less accessible for medium-sized companies.
Cloud technologies offer their advantages even in more complex and structured business scenarios; in fact, it is possible to create hybrid solutions capable of reaping both the typical advantages of the cloud and those of on-premise solutions. It is not possible a priori to define which is the best choice: the solution must be sought in a precise analysis of the needs and possible technological opportunities, then also verifying the relative economic aspects.
The choice of cloud storage spaces also offers great scalability, with the possibility of planning the expansion of resources according to the growth of the amount of data to be managed in the corporate backup process. Instead, relying on conventional storage solutions based on SAN and NAS will make it easier to convert these storage resources for other uses. If, on the other hand, the need for resources decreases, the cloud storage offer allows you to re-modulate the storage space with an indisputable cost saving.
Business backup and data value
Data and information represent a real indispensable value for the company: the damage that could result from the loss of entire volumes of data relating to R&D or Commercial is unimaginable. Therefore, the corporate backup process should be carefully managed and planned due to its strategic role.
It is equally important to be able to define a recovery and return to operations strategy in the shortest possible time: IT response times for restoring a condition of normality are therefore fundamental, but equally important are any solutions useful for guaranteeing the operations of employees for the transitional periods necessary for the definitive restoration of infrastructures and individual workstations.
Therefore, a well-structured corporate backup strategy must include assets that go beyond the main role of data protection, also combining virtualization solutions for individual workplaces. The goal is to guarantee continuity of access to data and the availability of applications using any alternative devices on the client side, which must comply with precise security policies.
This last scenario allows us to focus on the different nature of the data to be subjected to company backup: first of all, we have the real “data capital “created and produced by the company, then we have the information relating to all that is needed to create, access and manage the data created. They are very different types of data and change with different speeds, a further detail to take into consideration for the correct implementation of the company backup, which must be oriented towards security but also towards the objective of operability and flexibility.
Also Read : How To Secure Your Corporate Network In 5 Steps
