Backing up is good, restoring is better!
Backing up your company's data is a real challenge. Because of their confidentiality, and above all because they are essential to your business. So the question of how to restore them in the event of an incident needs to be addressed. Find out all our tips on backup.
Which backup will be able to restore your data?
Freeware and its limitations
It's true that there are free online backup solutions. But are they reliable? Since you haven't paid for anything, it wouldn't be shocking if, in the event of an incident, the publisher denied all responsibility. Take a look at their General Terms and Conditions (GTC) and deduce what would happen in the event of data loss: a priori, not much, at least nothing guaranteed. Which isn't very reassuring.
Physical backup: anything but invincible
You really want to put your data in a safe place, so that you can retrieve it no matter what happens. So should you rely solely on physical backups? Like external hard disks or local servers? It's the same approach as putting your valuables in a safe deposit box at the bank: sometimes the bank gets robbed.
Rely on players outside the problem
If nothing's safe, what can you do? Many companies are tempted to rely on their service providers, although not necessarily the right ones. A chartered accountant, for example, has de facto access to all your accounting and financial data. Answer: no. He simply has access, but will not take steps to protect it. For the excellent reason that it's neither his role nor his expertise, however trustworthy he may be.
Who to turn to?
Dedicated publishers
When the stakes are high, it's best to turn to a professional - in this case, a service provider specialized in online backup. This service is subject to a fee, and comes with guarantees. The provider is committed to protecting and restoring your data, and will be held liable if necessary.
A commitment to responsibility
Backup solution providers often display their DRP: Disaster Recovery Plan. Expressed in hours, this corresponds to the maximum time you can expect to be back up and running. This is a good indicator for assessing responsiveness on the one hand, and for gauging the potential damage suffered in the event of temporary interruption of access to your data on the other.
Confidence-building measures
While this DRP helps publishers to differentiate themselves and enhance the value of their service offering, it also serves as a guarantee. If, for example, the response time turns out to be longer than announced, you could legitimately make a claim for damages.
What restorations are possible?
Full or latest versions
The wisest way to back up your data is to make two copies: one physical, and one online. And it's a good idea to make them complementary: versioning locally - when your backups increment one another - and keeping only one version online: the most recent, for example.
Restore all or part of your data
By distributing your backups, you balance the risk. Now what happens in the event of an incident? Depending on your publisher, the restoration procedure will be more or less immediate and/or reliable. If you've only lost part of your data, initiating a global recovery protocol would be disproportionate. It would be unnecessarily time-consuming, and would also delay your productivity. That's why solutions like Beemo2Cloud allow you to tailor recovery to the situation at hand. This makes it possible to recover lost data, and to do so in the shortest possible time.
Plan for as many scenarios as possible
There are many different types of risk:
- hacking or viruses on the cloud side ;
- material damage such as fire or flood on the physical back-up side.
To best protect yourself against these risks, choose a service provider who anticipates as many of them as possible. The various data restoration scenarios should cover as wide a range as possible. With some providers, such as Beemo2Cloud, a box is supplied as a local backup. This means that, if necessary, you can carry out a manual data recovery yourself. Alternatively, a copy of the cloud backup can be sent to you as quickly as possible by the editor.
When it comes to backing up and protecting data, the question of data recovery should not be overlooked. You don't think about it until everything's going well, and then you're stunned by the first incident. Rather than letting uncontrolled risks threaten your organization's productivity, arm yourself with a reliable solution that will make a black-and-white commitment to do what needs to be done, should the need arise. Beemo2Cloud, mentioned here, is particularly well suited to this approach.
Article translated from French