Who Needs Internet Backup?
A Backup Article Contributed by Melissa Larose
Who Needs Internet Backup?
Do you need Internet backup? Most of the computer using population stores important work, personal and financial information on their hard drives. An easy and dependable way to insure the safety of that data is a great backup plan and the Internet can figure into that plan. Threats to data safety can result in the loss of data. These threats can run the gamut from electrical outage's, hard drive crashes, deliberate damage, viruses, fire, flood, and the ordinary run of the mill file deletion.
Data loss can sometimes result in a financial disaster. It can also mean hours of time, frustration, and revenue with no billable hours.
Should You Use Internet Backup?
Should Internet backup be a part of your backup and recovery plan? The answer to this questions lies in the evaluation of data within your company. What are your data needs? Do you know? You will need to know in order to assess whether Internet backup is right for you.
Start with a company wide effort to understand your data. Where does the data come from? What department generates what type of data? How does each type of data fit into the larger data issue? Analyze your processes, where does it go, why does it go there, when does it go and how? It seems like such a simple request but you will find that it is a very detailed and revealing process. Data is at the core of business and without it we have no revenue.
Why Internet Backup?
During your data evaluation you will discover your data needs. This information will lead you to find out how you use your data and what would happen if you suddenly did not have it available. So, what would happen if you suddenly lost your data? How quickly would you need access to it? If the data disaster happened on a Friday afternoon would you need the data immediately or could it wait until Monday morning if necessary?
Depending on the variety of disaster, you could probably be back up and running with the backup from Thursday night. Replacing Friday's work may not be as big a loss as one might think.
But if you need your data immediately you might want to consider an Internet backup service to help you out. Access to your data is 24/7 and recovery can happen as quickly as it takes to download the backup data. Depending on when you last used the backup process, the Internet could get you up and running faster than recovery from another source. You just need to consider how you are going to gain access if the disaster that caused the data loss also took down your servers and Internet connection. But then that would be a part of any backup and recovery plan.
Internet Backup Features
Internet backup does offer some convenient features that might sway you to try it. Security has improved a hundred fold due to authentication and encryption processes. Most backup software offers you the ability to compress all backup data before downloading which gives you even more space to store data. Scheduling convenience, easy recovery and archiving services can also add some perks to your Internet experience.
