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What you need to know about data backup storage in Woodland
Modern businesses need to take great care of their data for both legal and practical reasons. Choosing the right data backup storage is a key part of this. It’s also key to managing data backup costs effectively. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to what you need to know about data backup storage in Woodland.
You need robust oversight of your data
These days, it’s probably fair to say that most companies will be using the cloud, at least to some extent. Many companies, especially SMBs, are likely to be very much “cloud-first” if not “cloud-native”. The cloud brings all kinds of benefits, but it also brings the responsibility to exercise clear oversight over where your data is being held and who has access to it. You will need to achieve this through legal agreements (i.e. contracts) since you will not be managing your data in a “hands-on” manner.
In blunt terms, contracts only have value if they are enforceable. That means not just being able to get the other party into a courtroom (which can be hard enough). It means being able to turn a court judgment into real-world action. This is much easier to achieve if the other party is resident in, or at least near, your local area.
The safest option, therefore, is to make sure that your data is kept on servers that are located reasonably close to you and only accessed by people who are located in or near your local area (even if they’re working remotely). This means that you need to make sure you keep track of any remote staff and freelancers and also that you are clear about the whereabouts of any staff/freelancers employed by your IT services vendors.
It’s important to manage your production data effectively
Data backup management starts in your production systems. You need to keep control of what is going into them, especially with regard to personal data. You also need to be rigorous about eliminating data that has ceased to serve an active purpose. If you need to keep it (e.g. for compliance), then move it into a data archive.
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of purging dormant data from your production systems. In addition to lowering costs (including the cost of data backup storage), it also improves the efficiency of your data backup operations and lowers your exposure to security risks. Remember that you will usually have two data backups (meaning three copies of your production data) and that usually, at least one copy will be online (often both are) and hence at least somewhat exposed to cyberattacks.
In the cloud, you can fine-tune your use of storage to minimize your costs
If you have a clear overview of all your data, you’ll know how quickly any given data class is needed. You’ll, therefore, be able to fine-tune your use of production storage to prioritize data that is needed quickly over data for which people can wait. These settings will then inform your Recovery Time Objectives and hence your data backup storage.
The public cloud is usually the best place to store off-site data backups
Local data backups, by definition, are taken to your local environment. Off-site data backups can either be stored on physical media in an off-site storage location or taken to a public cloud. Regardless of your everyday working environment, the public cloud is usually the most sensible option.
This may seem obvious if you’re already in a public cloud. If you’re in a private cloud, then the logic is that using the public cloud is much more cost-effective than running a second private cloud on a full-time basis. If you feel you need one for business continuity/disaster recovery, then you can just activate it as needed and transfer your data there as needed.
In a data center, there is a little nuance. It is fair to say that using offline media does give complete protection against cyberattacks. It is, however, also fair to say that cyberattacks are just one form of business threat and it is dangerous to focus too much on them at the expense of the others. These others include accidental damage to, loss and/or theft of physical media (especially during transit), and loss of productivity due to extended recovery periods.
As with private clouds, in theory, you could mitigate against all of these by running a second data center full-time and using it as a data backup storage location. This would, however, be far beyond the budget of the average SMB.
If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced data backup storage partner in Woodland, please click here now to contact Salient IT.
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