If you’re in IT at a small-to-mid-sized business (SMB), you know what it feels like to wear many hats, one of which will be backup and disaster recovery. It’s a rare SMB that has anyone in IT specifically dedicated to this function, much less a full data protection team. And given that the way people…
Data Protection Trends, News & Backup Tips Microsoft 365 Backup Solutions: Retention Policy vs. True Data Backup If you spend time perusing online IT communities, you’ll eventually find someone asking a variation of this question: Can my company use Microsoft Office 365 retention policies as a suitable backup and recovery solution for our O365 data? Unlike…
When it comes to data protection, completing the backup and replication process isn’t enough, you need to be testing your data backup and recovery services. Backing up at frequent intervals throughout the day isn’t enough. Storing the backups safely isn’t enough. It’s all for naught unless you test your backups, because, without regular testing, all of…
Imagine this scenario. When the first employee into your office on a Monday morning fires up her computer, she encounters a threatening message on the screen: “We have taken control of your entire corporate network and encrypted your digital assets. Transfer 15 bitcoins into the account below, or your data will be permanently destroyed.” A ransomware…
All too often, data protection is a checkbox exercise. Have we got backups of our data? Check! Three copies of each? Check! Are they on two different media? Check! Is one offsite? Check! All done! Except you’re not all done. Understanding the 3-2-1 Rule for Effective Data Backup Strategies Three copies of data on two different types of storage media with…
With all of the IT demands on your to-do list right now, you’re probably not thinking about how to protect your company against the risks of data loss. Besides, what are the odds of a fire or flood at your office, or even that a careless employee will accidentally delete a mission-critical folder? We get it. Nobody…
Over the past year, COVID-19 has transformed the way businesses operate, and though workplaces are now reopening as the pandemic winds down, we don’t foresee a wholesale rush to return to the office. Remote work is here to stay. And it has serious implications for data protection. First, though, let’s get a clear picture of…
By now, you should have a better idea of which service(s) are right for your organization. But, with so many cloud providers vying to be your disaster recovery service provider, how do you select the right one? The most critical aspect of the selection process is to ensure you are considering the needs of the organization,…
You’ve heard the downtime horror stories. You’ve seen the statistics from major research firms like Gartner, which found that businesses lose an average of $5,600 every minute they can’t access their mission-critical data and systems. You know your organization needs a disaster recovery plan. It’s the only way to be confident that if an incident ever takes your…
Data Protection Trends, News & Backup Tips What Makes a Disaster Recover System Succeed? When you think about putting together a disaster recovery (DR) test plan, thoughts almost always go to which servers need to be included, what user accounts are involved, what applications will be impacted, and more. Next you might think who should help build your…
The idea that, at some point, one of your users is going to delete something important is well-founded. IT system administrators exist because of things like this. And when running your business operations within Office 365, the potential for data to be deleted is just as real. To compensate for this, Microsoft has gone to great…
Over the last few weeks, we’ve introduced you to – and educated you on – three of the most common services offered around disaster recovery. You may find that more than one service could be used to meet your needs. But are you supposed to choose just one? Would that even work for you? This…
While IT tends to start and end anything with the tech involved, disaster recovery management requires starting with the business and the risk of losing operations and planning a disaster recovery system from there. Your technology DR plan can’t just be a culmination of steps to be taken to recover a certain data set or…
Building a testing plan for disaster recovery is often not the easiest task. Looking past the simple “which workloads are critical?” discussions, DR testing is where “the rubber meets the road” and you put the plan through its measures. So, you need to be certain that what you’re testing will adequately represent both the intent and the proper execution…
Every DR effort revolves around what needs to take place during a disruption. And, as you walk through the process of building a disaster recovery plan policy (if you haven’t already), you’re going to find that what you need to deliver and what you can deliver are two very different things. For most companies an internal IT team does not…
