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Your Backup is your Best Line of Defense

It keeps you up when everything goes down

Why Backups are the Most Important Part of Your IT Support

It can take as little as one thoughtlessly opened email to bring down an entire company. Your server could be encrypted, your hard drives could be damaged in a power outage, or an employee could simply delete exactly the wrong file at exactly the wrong time, and it could be catastrophic for your business. But with proper backups and preparation you can be up and running with a minimal loss to productivity. A good backup plan protects you from downtime as a result of both mundane and catastrophic data losses.

File Backup

A File Backup stores individual files; this is your data. Excel sheets, customer databases, graphics, product specs, design files – these files are the core of your business, they’re what you need to document your work and maintain continuity from day to day.

Image Backup

An image/file/bare metal backup is a complete clone of your device. Not only are your files stored, but so are all of your programs and settings. A file backup will protect you from a deleted document; an image backup will get you up and running with minimal downtime in the event of a disaster.

Why You Need Both?

File backups save you from minor hiccups and data losses. A file backup can allow you to quickly retrieve individual files. An image backup is your protection against hackers, attackers, and acts of God. If a tornado destroys your building, an image backup can have your server up and running as soon as you have hardware – or a cloud server – to run it on. If your server is encrypted with ransomware, an image backup means you don’t have to pay the ransom.

A Case Study on the need for Backups

In May of 2019, the servers and computer infrastructure of Baltimore, Maryland was attacked by RobbinHood Ransomware. The ransomware encrypted the city’s servers, preventing residents from paying power bills, stopping real estate sales, shutting down city official communication, and tying up emergency services.

In the first days of the attack city employees created so many Gmail addresses that Google initially blocked them as suspicious accounts. The city took all but their essential servers offline, and received a ransom note demanding 13 bitcoin to unencrypt the servers.

The city did not have a written disaster response plan, did not have remediation protocols, and, most importantly, had not had consistent, reliable backups for months before the attack. In the end, a tremendous amount of data was lost, systems had to be reinstalled instead of simply restored, and the hack ended up costing the city approximately $18 million over the months that it took to repair the damage.

Before the attack, the city IT officer had requested three hundred thousand dollars for a new backup system that was never implemented; a three hundred thousand dollar system could have saved the city literally millions of dollars.

Good backups would not have prevented the initial hack and encryption of the system, but a disaster recovery plan based on regular, secure backups would have saved a huge amount of time and money, putting Baltimore back on track within days using tools ready at hand. The story of Baltimore’s bad backups has been a warning to the industry since it happened, and is a perfect illustration of why backups are such a high priority.

"The single most important thing any company or individual can do to improve security is have a good backup strategy. It’s been true for decades, and it’s still true today."

- Bruce Schneier, Security Technologist

Greg Duecker, IT Manager
Western Municipal Water District

Recover Quickly

Save time, money, and frustration by getting back on your feet after a disaster. We will establish recovery procedures and plans for a wide variety of data outages to make sure that if something goes wrong you have a plan in place and can get back to business without undue delays.

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What every Business should know about Backups

What People Get Wrong:

Keeping a secure backup is not a passive process. You can’t simply activate a backup software and walk away and expect to have a complete, efficient restoration process if you need to access your backup. Many business owners assume that once a backup is started it can be ignored, and that there’s no need to follow up – that they can set it and forget it. This is incorrect. Backups can be derailed by firmware updates, file renames, software upgrades, and a hundred other things. That’s why monitored backups are vital – you need to regularly ensure that the backups are happening in the first place before you can count on a reliable restoration. Once the backups are monitored, it is then necessary to regularly test them. Backups are the most important part of your IT and InfoSec plan. Backups are what protect you the most from any possible disaster. You should have a plan in place to ensure that your backups are working and ready to be deployed at any time – and that’s the plan we want to help you build.

What kind of Backup Plans are available?

File Backups – These are the most basic type of backup; they copy specific files to a secondary location so that a legacy copy of the files are saved. File backups are the most basic kind of backup, and will be a component of any backup solution.

Image Backups – An image backup is a perfect copy of your server at a specific moment in time. Image backups are large files that include software and settings, and can be used to restore your device.

Cloud Backup – Cloud backups store your data on an external, distributed device. This may mean that you’re storing your information on Amazon’s AWS servers, or on the servers of a particular cloud backup provider. Cloud backups are a good idea, but should always be encrypted and will always take a fair amount of time to retrieve for a full restoration.

Onsite Backup – An onsite backup is storing your information at your location on a piece of physical hardware, like an external storage drive. Local, physical storage offers the advantage of being faster to recover in the event of an emergency.

Offsite Backup – Offsite backups store your data outside of your office to prevent the loss of data in the event of a physical disaster, like a flood or fire.

Rotating Backup – A backup on alternating physical drives that are changed from one day to the next. Sometimes people will keep their backup drive connected at all times, which means that if their server is infected, their backup will also be infected; it also means that if your backup drive dies, you have lost your backups. By using rotating drives you will ensure that there is limited data loss in the event of a backup drive failure or compromise.

 

What kind of Backup Plans are available?

File Backups – These are the most basic type of backup; they copy specific files to a secondary location so that a legacy copy of the files are saved. File backups are the most basic kind of backup, and will be a component of any backup solution.

Image Backups – An image backup is a perfect copy of your server at a specific moment in time. Image backups are large files that include software and settings, and can be used to restore your device.

Cloud Backup – Cloud backups store your data on an external, distributed device. This may mean that you’re storing your information on Amazon’s AWS servers, or on the servers of a particular cloud backup provider. Cloud backups are a good idea, but should always be encrypted and will always take a fair amount of time to retrieve for a full restoration.

Onsite Backup – An onsite backup is storing your information at your location on a piece of physical hardware, like an external storage drive. Local, physical storage offers the advantage of being faster to recover in the event of an emergency.

Offsite Backup – Offsite backups store your data outside of your office to prevent the loss of data in the event of a physical disaster, like a flood or fire.

Rotating Backup – A backup on alternating physical drives that are changed from one day to the next. Sometimes people will keep their backup drive connected at all times, which means that if their server is infected, their backup will also be infected; it also means that if your backup drive dies, you have lost your backups. By using rotating drives you will ensure that there is limited data loss in the event of a backup drive failure or compromise.

 

 

Testing is a vital part of your backup plan

Regular backup testing should be built into your IT strategy so you can have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you are ready to recover at a moment’s notice.

The PMCS Advantage

There is no one backup solution that’s right for every business. In our partnership with you, PMCS will work to craft a tailored backup solution that meets your needs. We have partnered with Datto, Backup Assist, Veeam, and Wasabi to offer a wide variety of options for our customers and will craft a plan that works for you. We will consider your budget, the nature of your business, your location, and risk factors to create a system that will provide you with the coverage you need with room to expand as your business grows. We understand that backups are an active process, and that is why active monitoring is part of the PMCS process. Our technicians are constantly alerted to any issues with backups, including everything from limited drive space to corrupted files, and have regular backup maintenance scheduled to keep you safe.

Don’t let a disaster be a disaster

Even if your office burns to the ground, a good backup and recovery plan prevents a disaster from turning into a total loss. By following these five steps, you can take the first steps to getting back to business after a disaster.

  1. Strategize – A PMCS backup expert will consult with you about your environment and your needs, considering the size of your business, the speed you need to access your data, and what methods of redundancy will work best for you.
  2. Construct – We will build and install your backup system, configuring it to run in your environment and connecting to the networks that you need to have backed up.
  3. Implement – Once your backup solution is in place we will get the system dialed in, watching carefully and tweaking the configuration until you are getting good backups on a reliable schedule without any operating system conflicts or headaches from vendors.
  4. Test – after a reliable backup has been established we will regularly test the system by restoring files and checking for complete backups to ensure that your data is ready when you need it.

Reassess – we will monitor your system and analyze your usage patterns, storage history, and changing technology environment to expand or adapt your backups as needed to keep pace with your growing business.

Talk to us about backups and schedule a consultation today!