Did you know, that any data you store on your local devices, that you don’t backup, is a risk? Can you really afford to lose that data permanently? Especially if you run a business!

While generally speaking, the reliability of computer hardware improves year after year, there are always risks involved to the safety of your data. For example, accounts information, work files, client information and contact details.

Two Systems You Need To Use To Backup Securely

System Restore

The first component to backup is the system restore function in modern operating systems like iOS and Windows. They have built in backup tools for the operating system, should you install a piece of software or have a virus come along and destroy your system. Having a backup of the core operating system will allow you to recover your system to a previous working state saving you lots of work later, installing and setting everything up again.

This backup system is a local backup system, what happens is, the Operating system will periodically create system restore points of your operating system installation just in case you were to make a change to your computer that would make your O/S unbootable. An example of this would be if you install software that isn’t compatible and causes system crashes, or you get a virus or malware that you can’t find a way to remove.

If your system is unbootable due to a broken operating system, your work and files are much harder to get access to without specialist help. Being able to “rollback” or use a system restore to restore your computer settings to an earlier point in time may solve your problem.

While turned on by default, make sure your operating systems System Restore feature is being used especially for business machines.

Off-Site Backup

The other component to backup security is off-site or cloud backups. With the system restore feature, you are creating a backup of your computer for recovery later. With the off-site backup, you send important work files to an online backup provider to store the data off site.

Should your computer be lost, stolen, destroyed, untimely wounded or otherwise become a brick you can’t system restore. Backing important work related files to a cloud-based service like Google Drive means that  you can at least recover your important files.

There is a difference between cloud storage systems like Google Docs and off-site backup systems, however, while often free the Google Drive storage system is useful for small files in small quantities.

Off-site backup systems provide extra data redundancy and backup to multiple locations, so should something happen to the main off-site location, there are identical backups elsewhere of your data. This makes your data effectively invincible. These services often have unlimited storage but have a cost.

Tomsguide has written a good review of online file backup systems you can read more about that here.

Summary

Despite increased reliability with modern computers and systems, there’s always risk of data loss, and while the loss of personal files like photos and emails are distressing to lose, there is a real cost to losing business data.

It’s good practice to run anti-virus software and keep your computer clean. My advice is you should always back up your important work files to an off-site facility. if you don’t backup and you lose the data, you can lose business and income.

Can you afford not to back up your business data? I’d love your thoughts on this, please leave a comment in the comment section below.