Startups need a foolproof business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions to keep operations running when problems arise.
Comprehensive and timely data protection is required for new businesses of all
types and sizes, regardless of their niche.
While startups are often heavily oriented towards growth in their early stages,
it is important for these companies to plan worst-case scenarios.
The ideal approach to business continuity is to assume that problems will arise
at some point and prepare accordingly with appropriate business continuity and
disaster recovery solutions.
Select the optimal backup systems and features and your startup can forget
about the risk of data loss and handle the inevitable disaster with no business
interruption.
After all, data loss or stopped processes due to a digital attack or other
system failure can seriously affect the growth of your startup. The worst
possible scenario is a ransomware attack and / or massive data loss that will
cause your business to shut down before it has a chance to reach its true
potential.
Let's just take a look at some key BCDR tips for startup companies to consider
when evaluating data protection options.
1)
CHOOSE YOUR BACKUP CAREFULLY
Choosing
a data protection system for your business is of paramount importance. Choose
it wisely and you will have an invaluable safety net that will ensure that your
startup can continue rather than stopping after an unexpected data loss event. Malware,
hardware failure, natural disasters, and accidental deletion pose a threat to
your data. Invest some time developing a business continuity plan for your
startup that outlines risks, goals for continuity, and your strategy for
securing your data.
Your
data protection system should perform high-frequency backups and ensure
continuous availability so that data loss is significantly reduced if you need
to revert to the most recent recovery point.
Choose a backup system that ensures that you can quickly restore the backup
using a variety of methods so that your business processes can continue
regardless of the severity of the disaster.
2) YOUR STARTUP NEEDS CONTINUOUS DATA BACKUP
Today's
backups for startups can provide almost continuous backups.
This
high-frequency backup is important because it ensures that you can restore
most, if not all of your data if it is lost. Even if your company is a
small startup, a backup solution with enterprise technology for business
continuity and data recovery won't break your budget. There are affordable
systems that back up your data every 5 minutes. These systems are
specially designed for small and medium-sized businesses and ensure truly
comprehensive yet affordable data protection.
It
usually makes sense and is right that most small businesses don't necessarily
have to back up their data every second - but your BCDR system should
definitely be able to perform these backups regularly.
However, if your company produces or changes a large amount of data, or
processes sensitive data that needs ongoing protection, a high frequency of
backups is critical.
3)
YOU WILL ONLY KNOW THAT YOUR BACKUPS ARE FUNCTIONAL ONCE YOU HAVE VERIFIED THE
BACKUP
The
automatic verification of the data backup ensures that your backups can be
easily restored if necessary. Because of the high risk of data corruption
with traditional incremental backups, this verification is an essential feature
that startups and other businesses should look for in a BC / DR system.
The
integrity of all of your backups should be verified. Automatic backup
verification tests backups to ensure that they can be easily restored.
If
the backup is image-based, it should be tested in the form of a virtual machine
to ensure full viability.
If there are any problems, the administrator should be notified for immediate
action. Ideally, this process happens automatically so that you don't have
to devote even more time and effort to your data.
In
any case, have the backup backed up regularly for testing purposes.
4)
MAKE SURE YOU ALSO USE AN EXTERNAL BACKUP AND RESTORE OF YOUR DATA
Off-site
backups can provide an additional layer of protection for your data. This
allows you to restore your data from another location if there is a natural
disaster or fire at the headquarters of your startup and your on-site
infrastructure is destroyed or inaccessible.
Today's
BC / DR solutions for startups and other businesses should replicate on-premise
backups to the cloud, ideally with minimal load on your servers or network. While
backing up data on site is typically faster and offers superior performance,
there are times when you need to restore files from a secondary location.
Off-site
backup restoration provides invaluable security that you will have timely
access to your backed up data in the event of a disaster at your primary site
or in your data center.
For this additional protection function, look for BC / DR systems with which
you can virtualize data protection in the cloud and / or on-site so that you
can quickly access your operating systems, applications and files in a virtual
environment - even if you are far from the headquarters of your startup.
Start
up servers and entire infrastructures in the cloud quickly if something is
wrong with your data. At the push of a button: everything is available
again.
5)
IT'S GOOD TO HAVE BACKUPS WITHOUT DATA PROBLEMS
Can
you imagine restoring your backed up data only to find out that the information
has been corrupted?
This
problem is surprisingly common with traditional incremental data backups. The
last thing you need to do is reconstruct data from a number of sources such as
memory tapes. The further development of BC / DR has significantly
increased the reliability of data backups, so that protected computers can be
quickly restored without damage or other errors.
There
are backup systems whose approach ensures that backups are not dependent on the
backup chain, which may have data integrity problems in incremental BC / DR
systems.
In addition, this approach also increases the efficiency of data storage. This
is the fail-safe backup that your startup needs to ensure that protected data
can be backed up quickly and restored quickly without any problems.
6)
SECURE THE ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE
Small,
fast-growing startups sometimes make the mistake of relying on tools like
Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive to back up their data. This approach is
problematic in many ways. Apps like OneDrive and Google Drive were
designed with file sharing in mind, not business continuity. They don't
protect your entire data infrastructure, and worse, they don't have a viable
data recovery option other than downloading all of the files or restoring items
from a recycle bin (which are usually permanently deleted after a month or
two).
Then
the local data synchronized with the cloud is also susceptible to ransomware
and unintentional deletion.
Choose
comprehensive and reliable business continuity with a data protection solution
that protects the entire infrastructure.
This ensures that all of your servers, application data, operating systems,
computers, and email are properly protected. In addition, restoring such
data with virtualization technology can accelerate recovery even further and
provide instant access to protected services and devices.
7)
LOOK FOR ADDITIONAL RANSOMWARE PROTECTION
Startups
are particularly vulnerable to ransomware attacks, especially if employees
haven't received cybersecurity training to educate them about phishing scams
and other threats.
Ransomware
attackers are aware that startups often have minimal digital security
resources. A long outage can paralyze a company. As a result,
startups are more likely to pay ransom to prevent the ransomware attack and get
back to business as usual. It is possible for infections to infiltrate a
network and wreak havoc, even with malware prevention systems in place. For
this very reason, every company should have multiple layers of protection
against digital threats, including backup systems designed to prevent
cyberattacks. This additional protection can help identify signs of
infection in the backup so that appropriate action can be taken in good time.
There
are backup systems that scan data backups for indications of changes by
ransomware on many files and quickly alert administrators as soon as an
infection is detected.
This additional protection ensures that companies can react quickly to attacks
before the infection spreads over a network to other computers and servers.
Once an infection is identified, administrators can immediately restore the
most recent clean backup, or deal with problems quickly.
8)
RECOVER DATA QUICKLY AND EASILY
After
a data loss, delays in the recovery process can disrupt operations
significantly (and skyrocket downtime costs). In the event of a
particularly long outage, it can probably terminate your startup again. This
is exactly why it is so important for startups to rely on disaster recovery and
business continuity solutions that offer a wide range of recovery options for
timely recovery of data.
Good
backup systems allow your startup to quickly restore protected servers in the
form of virtual machines, as well as a range of other restore options, from
file-level restores to full bare metal restores.
Robust recovery options ensure that you and your team will be up and running
immediately after the worst of data loss incidents.
With
a reliable BC / DR solution, it can only take a few minutes for startups to
recover their data and resume operations after a server failure or ransomware
attack. This fast data recovery can literally mean the difference between
a startup that survived a disaster and one that closes its doors for good.
Comments
Post a Comment