SpartanTec, Inc. Columbia: Difference Between Data Backup and Disaster Recovery

Does having a data backup plan mean you’re ready for any unexpected major disaster? No. An efficient disaster recovery plan requires more than that.

Data Backup Versus Disaster Recovery

Let’s say you backup your data using cloud services but you don’t have a disaster recovery plan. When something happens, you can use your data backups to cover from the disaster. However, it will take you a long time to recover and you need to spend a fair amount of effort. This may be applicable to an individual but not so much for businesses.

You need to have a plan in place to make sure that your business recovers as soon as possible to avoid serious damage to your company and clients. You may also be responsible for keeping updated with serious compliance regulations that would allow you to backup and restore confidential data within a certain time frame.

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How to build a complete disaster recovery plan?

Data backup is the first step of a disaster recovery plan. If you want to be prepared for a disaster, there are other things you need to do aside from backing up your data.

All relevant data must be backed up.

You might not need to back up all information in your file systems like temporary files. But it’s also easy to overlook files that are important such as configuration files.

Secure your data backups

Data backup data is no good if there are errors or damaged. Apart from that, data backup could be a fertile information source for attackers looking for confidential data. For these reasons, it’s important to make sure that your data backups are secured against cyberattacks.

Regular Data Backups Required

It’s ideal to perform continuous and real time data backups, but it’s not feasible. What you should do instead as part of your cybersecurity is to determine how often you should back up your data by knowing how much lag in data you can tolerate without any disruption to your business operation.

If you could afford to lose an hour’s worth of sensitive data then you should backup on an hourly basis. If you can afford only to lose a day’s worth of client records then you should backup on a daily basis.

Include Your Employees In You Plan

You should know who will do your data backups and who would be on call to get the data back in case of an unexpected event or an emergency.

Set in place Process For Data Recovery

Data backup is one thing and restoring is a different one. Disaster planning should be set in place for different scenarios. One in which your IT infrastructure stays intact but your data will be lost, and another for a scenario where you have to stand up to a new IT infrastructure, then get the data back to it.

Make Sure The Quality of Recovered Files or Data Backups

The data you will backup and recovery will only be useful if it’s free of inconsistencies and errors. That’s why your data quality must be integrated into your recovery plan.