Backups: The Difference Between a Minor IT Problem & a Business Disaster.

Oct 5

3 min read

What would happen to your business if you lost every file, database, email, customer record, and critical system tomorrow?

For many businesses, the answer is uncomfortable: "We don't know."

Businesses often think about backups only after something goes wrong. A server fails. An employee accidentally deletes an important folder. A laptop is stolen. A hard drive dies. Or, increasingly, ransomware encrypts everything the business depends on.

The problem isn't simply losing the data. The real cost is being unable to operate while trying to recover it.

A properly designed backup system can turn a potentially devisating event into a manageable IT incident. Without one, a single failure can result in thousands (or potentially hundreds of thousands) of dollars in lost productivity, emergency recovery costs, lost revenue, and reputational damage.

What is a Backup?

A backup is a separate copy of your business data that can be used to resore information after its been lost, corrupted, deleted, or compromised.

But, simply having a backup isn't necessarily enough.

A good backup strategy considers more.

What needs to be backed up
How often backups occur
Where backups are stored
How long backups are retained
Who can access or delete them
How quickly the business needs to recover
Whether backups can survive ransomware attacks
Whether the backups have actually been tested and are successful.

A backup that exists but cannot be restored is not a reliable backup strategy.

The True Cost of NOT Having Backups

Lets consider a small business with 15 employees. Imagine an employee accidentally deletes a critical folder containing customer information, project documents, financial records, and years of business files.

If there is a reliable backup, IT may be able to restore the information relatively quickly with minimal downtime from the mistake.

Without one, the business may have to consider expensive data-recovery services, or accept that the information is gone permanently.

Now, imagine a problem much larger.

A ransomware attack encrypts the company's file server, applications, and all shared drives. Suddenly, all employees are locked out and cannot access anything. No company records. No accounting information. No contracts. No invoices or quotes. No documented procedures. No shared drives.

The company isn't simply dealing with an IT problem anymore. The company is no longer able to operate normally.

The costs can quickly multiply to get back operational.

Emergency IT response = Hundreds to thousands of dollars
Data Recovery = Hundreds to Tens of thousands of dollars
Lost Employee productivity = thousands of dollars per day
Lost sales = potentially thousands of dollars per day
Rebuilding servers and work stations = Thousands of dollars
Regulatory / Legal consequences = Potentially substantial
Ransom Payment = No guarantee of recovery

All of this is costs before considering the long-term affects and damage to the business. Trust of customers lost. Sales ruined. Some businesses never recover from such a disaster.

Backups Are Often Cheaper Than Downtime

Consider a business with 20 employees. If the average fully loaded cost of an employee is approximately $40 per hour, then 20 employees unable to work represents $800 of labor capacity lost each hour. Thats $6,400 lost in an 8 hour day. That doesn't include lost sales, missed deadlines, customer dissatisfaction, emergency IT services, and other expenses.

For a larger organization, the number becomes enormous.

That is why backups should not be viewed as an IT expense. It is Business Continuity Insurance. You are spending money to make sure that when something goes wrong, your business can keep moving forward.

The 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

A common approach for backups is the 3-2-1 strategy.

3- Keep Three Copies of your Data. This would include your production data, and two backup copies.

2- Use Two Different Types of Storage. Examples of this would be Local backup appliance, and Cloud Backups.

1- Keep One Copy Offsite. Your offsite copy protects your business if something happens to your building, local servers, or backup equipment.

How Much Should a Business Spend Backup Solutions?

There are many solutions when it comes to backups. Many businesses operate in a Microsoft enviroment. Here are some great backup tools and solutions that are easily implemented in most businesses:

Windows Server Backup
Microsoft Azure Backup
Microsoft 365 Backup and Data protection

There isn't one universal cost for a backup solution, because backups depend on:

Number of Users
Amount of Data
Number of Servers
Data Change Rate
Retention Requirements
Cloud Storage
Local Hardware
Backup Software
Disaster Recovery Requirements
Compliance Requirements
Desired Recovery Time

A small 5-person company with one server will have dramatically different requirements than a 100-person company running multiple servers.