Your heart is sinking in your chest. You can’t believe this is happening. The blue screen of death sends fear washing all over you as you realize that you’ve just destroyed all of the work that you’ve done over the past month.
Have you ever found yourself in this situation? This scenario is all too common, and if you haven’t experienced it yet, rest assured that someday there’s a very real chance you will.
Backing up data is important to the success of any business. Without solid backups in play, you could easily find yourself scrambling to make up for lost data when an unfortunate incident like the one above happens.
However, you should also keep in mind that there’s a proper and improper way to do backups. In this article, we’ll teach you a few common mistakes businesses make when backing up data.
1. Failure to Test Backups
The first backup mistake that companies often mistake is not testing their backups. Just because you have a system in place doesn’t mean it works correctly. By testing the backups that you already have, you can ensure that your system is operating as it should.
If you do find any flaws in the backed-up data, then you can remedy them before you need the data to come in clutch.
2. Lack of Backup Failure Alerts
No backup system is perfect. Thus, there are often times when a backup will fail.
If you don’t have failure alerts enabled in your backup system, you won’t be able to tell when those failures happen, leaving you with missing gaps in your backed-up files that you may need later on down the road.
3. Only One Copy of Data
Another common mistake is having only one copy of your backed-up data. What if your misfortunes compound and you lose both your current data as well as your backup copy? For this reason, you should have at least two copies of the backed-up data stored on different servers.
4. No Security Measures
You should treat your backed-up data just like your current data, in that you should have stringent security measures in place to keep away individuals with nefarious intent. The servers should not only be physically secure but should also have the appropriate firewalls set up.
5. Manual Backups
Last but not least, one final backup mistake is using manual backups. A manual system is prone to failure, as we all sometimes forget to do our tasks. This simple mistake could cause a huge problem down the line.
The prevalence of automated backup systems also makes it a no-brainer to move away from a manual backup system.
Remember These Mistakes When You’re Backing up Data
If you’re backing up data, you have to be careful.
Avoid the mistakes mentioned above, and you’ll soon have safe, secure stores of backed-up data that you can use should your system ever crash.
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