Scary Statistics on SMB Data Backup by Jay Livens

The reality of today's business environment is that data and data backup are critical. In many respects, data protection is like homeowners insurance, you hate to pay the monthly or yearly bill, but when your house burns down, you are thankful that insurance is there to help you. Backup is most efficient and cost effective way to protect yourself from a data outage. It is not just for the big companies all companies must have a strategy. It is with this in mind that I recently read an article entitled Failed backups endanger revenue and productivity and emerged feeling horrified about the statistics included in the article. Let's look at some highlights.

However, more than half (53%) of the organizations surveyed revealed they do not conduct daily backups.

Seriously? I break into a cold sweat reading this. 53% of the organizations surveyed are not protecting their data on a daily basis! This is a disaster waiting to happen. If you choose infrequent backups then your recovery options are equally infrequent and you are at a risk of data loss. Going back to the insurance metaphor, this is like a scenario where you have a small house and keep adding on to it, but never insure the renovations. Thus, if you have a fire, insurance will only pay for the original house and not the improvements. With data protection, you can only recover what you have protected and so if you backup once a week then you are at risk of losing seven days worth of data.

When asked why they don't backup, the admins say:

it's not an efficient use of their time, according to nearly one-third (32%) of respondents.

Not an efficient use of their time, really? I am flabbergasted. The real question is whether you care about your data. If you don't care, then protection is definitely a waste of time, but I would venture to guess that ALL companies have data of some meaningful value. If you think of this in the context of insurance, this is like not paying your bills because you find them too complex and time consuming. This strategy might make sense if you don't care about replacing your house if it burns down, but is a terrible idea if you place any value on your house whatsoever. In fact, if you really don't care about your house then why have insurance to begin with? It is the same with backup, if you don't care about your data then by all means, don't back it up, but if data means anything to you then please create some sort of strategy!

Nearly one-quarter (23%) of IT admins said backing up data that frequently is not necessary' or that there's not much data' to backup.

This statement is similar to the previous one. In short the decision about whether you backup your data or not should have nothing to with how much data you have, but rather its importance. If you really don't care about your data then don't back it up, but if your data means something to you then you should implement a consistent strategy. You will need a plan regardless if you have a few GB or hundreds of TB. In the insurance example, you want insurance on your house regardless of whether it is a shack or a palatial mansion unless, of course, you don't care about your house.

In order to protect critical information, companies need to regularly test their backup solutions to ensure they work properly. However, nearly one-third (32%) of IT administrators surveyed revealed their organizations do not conduct such tests.

Recovery testing is critical. While we all endeavor to ensure that our data protection policies and methodologies are consistent and reliable, we don't really know unless we perform tests. It is critical to periodically test to ensure that the data is there and that the recovery process is fully understood. A lack of testing puts the business at unnecessary risk of outage or data loss.

The statistics listed above are scary. As an IT practitioner, you should think about the criticality of backup and recovery in your infrastructure. It is easy to avoid or otherwise ignore the technology but doing so puts you at significant risk. Just like most people would be horrified about the idea of nonexistent homeowners insurance, you should be equally uncomfortable about the idea of an inconsistent backup strategy.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2013/service-lines/data-backup-and-recov...
	See more stories from ironmountain

Most recent headlines