Data is being generated at an unprecedented rate by enterprises of all sizes today. As a result, data loss for an organization of any size can be disastrous, for employees, customers and your business overall.
Think of a situation where your office is affected by any natural disasters or randomly catches fire, destroying all of your computers. With the assistance of a cloud backup, not only will your information be protected, but it will also guarantee that your startup will be operational once more with the help of data recovery from the cloud and following a short period spent physically rebuilding. Without a backup, however, you risk having to establish your company from scratch, which might take months or years.
Why Enterprise Data Recovery is important
The goal of creating backups is to generate multiple copies of your data, so you have something to fall back on if your primary data becomes corrupted. Malicious ransomware attacks and human error are just a few possible causes of primary data loss.
Data breaches in the United States are expected to cost an average of $9.5 million in 2022, according to ForgeRock's projections. In the past two years,there has been a 400% rise in the amount of data lost. Data breaches involving fewer than one hundred records cost around $18,120; those involving more than one hundred records cost anything from $5 million to more than $15 million in lost revenue.
Having a backup copy of your data enables you to restore it from an initial point in time to help your startup recover quickly from an unexpected crisis.
To guard against data loss or corruption, you should keep an extra copy of your files on a different storage medium. There are various backup options, from a USB stick to an external hard drive or decentralized storage in the cloud.
If you'd like to reduce the data lost between backups, you should make them as often as possible. You'll have to deal with more data loss when trying to recover from a failure if you don't have recent backup copies available. With several copies of the data, you can restore to a time when your systems were not damaged by malicious cyberattacks, hardware failure, or data corruption.
What are the Different types of Data Backups?
There are three basic backup methods: complete, incremental, and differential. Any of these can be used or a combination of different methods depending on the startup business model and the importance of data stored.
A full backup is replicating all data from the source to another destination. In terms of storage space, this is the most inconvenient option. Because it's more time-consuming, it's usually used in conjunction with another backup strategy, such as differential or incremental.
An incremental backup is a type of backup that only backs up newly added information or information that has been added since the most recent full backup. The data that is backed up then incrementally builds upon itself. This reduces the amount of storage needed and the time it takes to complete a backup.
Somewhat like incremental backup, a differential backup adds on to the last backup. A differential backup copies only the data that has been modified since the last full backup. Following the completion of the first full backup, subsequent backups will only include the revisions made to the data from the initial batch. Decentralized Storage solutions on the blockchain are the best way to implement differential backups since the changes between two sets of data can be verified easily using the blockchain ledger.
The 3-2-1 backup planis yet another option for ensuring optimum data retention.
The 3-2-1 technique involves:
- Backing up data to three different locations.
- Using two different storage mediums.
- Storing an additional copy in a different geographic location.
This approach is the best way to protect your startup's data in the event of a variety of disasters. Having the data stored in three different locations ensures that the loss of one backup won't be disastrous. Another layer of protection is provided by creating backups on two different types of storage. In addition, storing at least one copy of your data in a separate part of the world will protect it from natural disasters that strike only a particular region.
The Recommended Tips for Data Backup and Data Recovery
Data backups can be complicated and time-consuming, but there are six simple methods to make the process easier.
Backup Automation
The manual process of backing up your data will cause headaches. Take preventative measures and ensure that automatic backups are set up to run regularly. Having a plan in place in the event of a crisis will make it less stressful. This means you can relax knowing your data is safe and secure.
Consider the long-term consequences of manual data backups if you insist on doing so. You'll have to take time out of your already heavy workload to back up every bit of data manually. This is a time-consuming process that requires a lot of planning. If you fail to back up for a day, week, or month, your startup could be in significant trouble when calamity hits.
Store Multiple Copies in Different Locations
Having a backup of your data is essential, primarily if your business operates in multiple countries. For example, a UK-based corporation with a small New York office must have duplicate copies saved in all of these locations. If you follow this procedure, The backups will protect your firm from file-based and location-based calamities. If the UK office cannot access the data at that location, New York will still have access to the information. And if New York files become corrupt for some reason, you'll still have a backup.
Startups can benefit from this method as well. Even if you only have one backup location, you can store different versions of your data and diversify where and how it is stored. Automating the backup of your data across different places is now possible with a plethora of backup tools and solutions. A good option is to store it in a decentralized storage system, where the data can be stored across multiple storage servers called nodes. Companies like Slik aim to optimize the decentralized storage ecosystem for enterprise data recovery.
Local data constraints must also be considered when creating duplicate backups. Work with a service provider who can make your data accessible from any location and comply with local and industry regulations.
Always Encrypt your Data
As a startup grows, it will acquire new data in various forms, including data about its customers, records of its transactions, and plans for further offerings. This information is essential to the startup's continued existence and success.
Unfortunately, only a small percentage of emerging startups are aware of the need for data security. Businesses that do not protect their data with encryption risk being breached and will be unable to expand and compete. The new gold standard for data security is encryption. There are several ways to protect sensitive data from hackers, spies, and negligent employees who will ultimately get their hands on it.
Secure, encrypted channels are available in backup software that allows you to encrypt data on your device and upload it to the cloud in encrypted form.
Policy-based Data Retention Method
Retaining data in accordance with predetermined policies is referred to as policy-based retention. Adopting more complex backup plans is highly beneficial if the backup solution allows you to establish constraints for the amount of data that should be retained. You can configure your backup system so that it will only back up the data that is necessary for you to back up.
Use Decentralized Storage for Backup and Data Recovery
Decentralized Storage has several advantages compared to traditional enterprise data backup and recovery solutions like AWS and Azure. From competitive price to guarantee of immutability and redundancy, decentralized storage makes itself miles ahead of other storage solutions.
Decentralized storage systems offer a high level of security and privacy, primarily due to two important factors. Encryption is the first step in ensuring the safety and security of any data. The data is then spread across thousands of storage nodes after it has been encrypted. This is done so that no single node becomes corrupted and brings down the entire network. A decentralized storage network prevents any one node from having access to or the ability to read the data that has been stored.
Test the Data Recovery Process
Re-evaluate your backups and the data recovery process from time to time. Set-and-forget is a common pitfall for many startups regarding data backup. In many cases,backup solutions are completely automated, making it simple to overlookthat they're doing their job. It's important to spend 30 minutes making sure that the data you need to backup is stored and that you can recover it within the expected time limit.
Even if backup logs show that a backup was done on date X at time Y, that doesn't mean everything is perfect. It's possible that the data you uploaded to the cloud were corrupted during the transfer process. You wouldn't want to discover that the data is corrupt when you require your backup files. Therefore, it is recommended that you routinely confirm that everything is functioning properly by recovering a few files from your most recent backup, which should only take a few minutes of your time.
Bottomline
Enterprise Data Recovery solutions are very important to startups, as mentioned in the article. Fortunately, the data backup and recovery market is expanding at a healthy rate.
At aCompound Annual Growth Rate of 10.2 percent, it is anticipated that the total size of the global data backup and recovery market will increase from $7.13 billion in 2017 to $11.59 billionby the year 2022.
Businesses collect large volumes of data through the internet and various other technologies. However, the demand for enterprise data recovery will likely remain stable in the foreseeable future.