What Is the Best Data Backup Frequency for a Business?
How often should you back up your data to ensure one of your business's most valuable assets? If you consider getting data backup storage in Ellicott City, this question is likely on your mind. As the risk of losing and compromising data increases these days, you should know the best backup frequency.
What to Consider in Setting Ideal Backup Schedule
So, how often should you initiate the backup process for your business?
The answer is it depends on a few crucial factors. Unlike the usual misconception, data backups involve more than just copying data from one location to another. It can get pretty expensive, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing that you have backups to critical information.
Aside from finalizing which cloud backup provider to hire, you should decide how often to backup data. But first, you have to consider the following to determine the best data backup strategy:
- Is your data manager a part of the in-house IT team or outsourced?
- Do you want to back up only the critical data or every piece of data you have?
- Are you planning to get data backup storage in Ellicott City to follow regulations or impose corporate policy?
- Is your preferred location for storing information on-site or off-site?
- Do you want to keep your data in the cloud or traditional storage media?
- How critical are your data to your operations?
- What existing data backup equipment do you have?
- How often do you make changes to your data?
- What is your target recovery period for your data?
- Does the backup process slow down your business operation?
Knowing your decisions based on the factors cited above will help you find the best server cloud backup or traditional backup you need. Make sure to figure out how critical your data is and how frequently they change first. These are two of the essential items that will affect your decision.
Typical Practices in Using Data Backup Storage in Ellicott City
Do you have an idea now about how often you should ask your traditional or cloud backup provider to copy your data? Don't worry. You can talk about it in length with your service provider.
In general, though, medium-sized businesses usually need a complete data backup every 24 hours. Due to data changes, they need incremental backups every six hours.
It might be a different story for medium-sized online businesses. A 24-hour interval for their full backups might work. However, they often need incremental backups every four hours, especially if they get frequent transactions.
Enterprises dealing with heavy traffic or extra sensitive data should have more frequent backups. You should have a complete backup every 24 hours. But this time, incremental backups should be done to your data backup storage in Ellicott City every three hours. Consult your backup service provider on how to do this without significantly slowing down your system for daily operations.
Pick between manual and automatic backups. But if you want to maximize the process, go for the automatic option. Manual data backups tend to be interrupted by human error. If your IT team is not familiar with the process, leave the work to a professional cloud backup provider.
Why Automate Your Use of Data Backup Storage in Ellicott City
Automating data backups removes the risk of being missed or done incorrectly due to human error. It lowers the chances of data loss in case of a disaster, hardware or power failure, and similar incidents.
But first, you have to find the best server cloud backup to automate the process. It is the initial step towards enjoying an efficient backup and disaster recovery solution. The automation will improve your productivity and increase your confidence in maintaining data security and integrity.
You don't need to burden your IT team to remember to initiate the backup process. Your backup service provider's program can kick in and start backing up data independently.
Don't put your data security at unnecessary risks. If you are looking for data backup storage in Ellicott City, you can count in, try Swift Systems. We provide flexible backup schedules, as you need. We also offer incremental backups, one-time restoration of multiple versions, online access, and scalability.
Swift Systems offer fully managed cloud backup services. If you haven't started on your disaster recovery preparations, we can help you with that, too. We also have experts who can address your need for database backup automation.
Are you interested in strengthening your backup solutions? Contact Swift Systems for a free consultation with a technical expert today!