Backing up your data can help you out in a variety of different situations, and without a good backup system in place, you can easily lose a lot of time and money, not to mention having to work doubly hard to replace everything (assuming what has been lost is replaceable). A backup can save your business, and here are the best reasons for ensuring that you do it.
Data Recovery
Mistakes happen more often than we might like to admit, and since everyone is fallible, those mistakes could quite easily happen to you. No matter how careful you are being, there could still be instances where you lose data. It could be an email containing a virus that you open without thinking, or you might accidentally delete the wrong file. There could even be a fault in your computer that means that the hard drive stops functioning as it should.
If you have a backup on an external hard drive, a data stick, or on a cloud system, then you can restore your data to before the problem occurred (this is why regular backups are important so that you don’t lose too much). Remember, though that even external hard drives and data sticks can have their own issues. Heat can affect these storage devices, for example, so you need to look after them, although a company such as Secure Data Recovery should be able to help if the worst happens.
Audits
Most businesses are required by law to keep business records for a certain period of time. This could be for auditing purposes, or for tax reasons, for example. Although the information will be stored on your computer, sometimes you will need to remove that data and store it elsewhere (if your hard drive becomes full, or you are switching to a new computer, amongst other reasons), and backing up is a good idea when this happens just in case something is lost in the process. When you have this extra backup, you can easily pass it across to the IRS or anyone else who needs to see it for regulatory reasons. Without it, you could face a large fine because you aren’t compliant, and if that’s because you lost data it won’t matter – you’ll still need to pay.
No Downtime
When a business loses data, it usually means that the owners have to close it down for a while until they can get everything back to how it should be and start trading again. This can be a disaster, especially for smaller businesses, as customers won’t want to wait and will start looking elsewhere. It also shows that the business is not prepared for the problem, and that can lead people to wonder about how safe it is to use them in the first place. When the business reopens, there may be no one left to sell to and that one instance of losing data could have spelled the end of the company.
Backing up data would have meant there was no downtime (or very little – hours compared to days or even weeks) and customers may not even have known anything was wrong.
