By backup, I mean do you take a copy of your business to an external drive, a USB stick or some other device for safe keeping? Or, do you have a cloud backup facility whereby a perpetual offsite backup us undertaken?
Attacks on computers are increasing. These can range from a attack that corrupts data through to an attack that denies you access to the computer until you pay a ransom.
Not backing up every day is stupid. The cost of cover from this could be thousands in terms of IT expert fees or even more if you are looking to sell your business in the next year and do not have current business performance data on which to set a price.
I heard of a newsagent who paid $5,000 to recover business data from two weeks prior to when they were attacked. That could have been avoided had they followed basic backup advice.
Oh, and if you are backing up every day, have it checked to make sure you are actually backing up.
Not backing up and not checking your backups is like leaving the front door of the shop unlocked and the light on.
The world is headed for cloud based working. As the battle between Zero and MYOB shows. Bring it on.
Colin the evidence does not support your claim. While there is growth in some cloud based services, there is a trend in several retail channels to move away from cloud based business applications. The key is software that works locally as well as in the cloud.
That said, the discussion of cloud is not relevant to this post. Everyone has local data, everyone is a risk from attack.
Mark,
My background is as an accountant and I disagree. I have experienced data security evolving with the cloud. 2 years ago I went cloud based with my accounting records. Best thing I ever did, not only did I remove the back up issue, I also achieved a massive efficiency gaining by accessing and updating my records from convenient locations.
Your post is about security backups. True cloud working negates that issue.
It doesn’t, actually, Colin. Nothing eliminates the risk.
As I noted: While there is growth in some cloud based services, there is a trend in several retail channels to move away from cloud based business applications.
My post is about data backup for local data, not about cloud /; no cloud.