Remote Backup Saves Your Enterprise
A Backup Article Contributed by Melissa Larose
Remote Backup Saves Your Enterprise
Remote backup could play a big role in your disaster recovery plan. Consider the value of your data and its importance to your enterprise. What would you do without your data? How long could you go with a crashed network? How important is your data to the retainment of your customer? What portion of your data is critical to your business and what data would need to be returned to the system first? All these questions and more need to be answered when putting together a backup plan. Does remote backup play into your needs?
What is Remote Backup
Remote backup has been in the IT bag of tricks for quite sometime. In the past latency issues and security concerns have kept it from becoming popular. However, with the recent and ever growing instances of terrorism at our heels many companies are reconsidering the value of remote backup.
Recent software updates have lessened the problems remote backup has had in the past. Remote backup services are much more reliable in their service level and security than they ever have been. Their tools are simple and so is the process.
After a download of software form the service provider, a member of your IT team states download preferences for your company identifying what files need to be copied, from where they need to be copied and when they need to be copied. Then the service provider begins to download. The first download may take awhile but subsequent downloads will only require copying of changed files.
Remote Backup is Not the Only Backup
It is a serious question to ask whether or not a remote backup is all you need. Be prepared and request of your service provider an archived copy to be made and stored separately from your remote backup.
Choose to make remote backup an emergency backup or choose to make additional copies of your data on your own and locate them away from your business site. This may sound redundant, especially to a company that has never experienced a disaster of any proportion, but this is extra insurance against theft, corruption, or destruction of your data. If your data is valuable you can find a way to incorporate redundancy into your plan. Redundancy is not necessarily a bad word.
Remote Backup Warnings
It only makes sense that a remote backup location can suffer the same types of threats and risks as a business anywhere else. It is important to make sure you have chosen the right service provider for your company, one that has the same work ethic and understanding of disaster planning as your own management team. After all they are an extension of your company and should reflect a similar philosophy.
Therefore, make sure the remote backup service provider has a comprehensive security plan and disaster recovery plan in tested and in place. If seeing the remote site will assure you of the safety of the building location, then make a trip to do so. Adding clauses in your contract assuring the existence of the security claimed and the disaster recovery plan is not a bad idea. Validating the insurance capacity of the provider is another step to peace of mind.
