Happy World Backup Day! by Jay Livens

I blog frequently about the challenges of data backup and recovery and today being World Backup Day, it is a reminder of criticality of the process. However, readers need to remember that the importance of backup and recovery extends far beyond corporations.

Most of my readers are corporate in nature, but the reality is that backup is much bigger. EVERYONE should have a backup strategy, from a college student protecting his/her papers and essays to large families with years of photos and other critical documents. Just because these people don't command multiple-million dollar budgets or dedicated IT departments does not mean that backup is any less important. In fact, I believe that backup is MORE important for these types of consumers since their information is often stored on a single hard drive, a failure of which would result in total data loss. Not fun!

Corporations are often more fortunate because they recognize the importance of IT and backup specifically and incorporate it in all their processes. However, just because you are an SMB does not mean that there are not simple steps you can take to protect your information. There are a number of ways to address these challenges, and in my experience, the simplest and most powerful solution is cloud backup. With a cloud solution, you can install an agent on your systems (laptop or desktop) and the agent will automatically copy your information to a remote cloud location for long-term protection. Best of all, these solutions also store multiple versions of your files and so you can access previous versions in the case of data corruption or other similar issue. The same technology is commonly used in corporations every day.

While I like cloud, there are a myriad of other options. My recommendation is that you choose a solution that is automated. Any system that requires manual action (such as file copying) is unlikely to deliver consistent protection. That is the challenge of backup, it is much like insurance. While most people hate paying monthly insurance bills (or running daily backup processes), insurance (or backup) is priceless when a loss event occurs. In fact, I know someone who had their personal images stored on a laptop and unfortunately, their house caught fire and burned down. While most importantly, no one was injured and insurance covered the real estate replacement, the images were gone forever. Don't let this happen to you!

World Backup Day is a time to ponder the importance of backup, not just today - but every day. I encourage every reader to think carefully about how they are protecting their personal and corporate information. You do not want to find out that you don't have a backup when a disaster occurs.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/service-lines/data-backup-and-recov...
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