Why does my company need backups?

Studies indicate that only 30% of all companies use available technologies in order to facilitate archiving and restoring of information. There are several examples where entire companies had to be shut down because of their inability to recover a mission-critical piece of information after a security leak such as a virus, a disgruntled employee or the always-looming power cut before the backup has successfully completed. An in-depth risk analysis is the only way to ensure the complete and fail-safe implementation of a backup process to ensure business continuity:

• What type of information exists in the enterprise, and where is it stored?
• How relevant are the various classes of information to the business?
• What is the resulting backup strategy, based on the above information?

What kind of backup strategies exist?

Security copies (used in this article synonymously with backups) are required to restore the configuration of a PCs and the information contained in its memory after a data loss. There are at least two different approaches to backup and restore:

1. Disaster recovery is intended to enable the complete recovery of a PC, including all installed programs such as the operating system or the word processor, in addition to the actual user information like text documents, mails or spreadsheets. This approach enables a one-click restore of a complete machine in case of loss or theft. The drawback is that the increased amount of data that has to be backed up (data + programs) leads to a longer time required for the actual backup process.
2. Data backup if focused on the real differentiator to your company: company-internal information that (in case of loss) could not be recreated at all or only with heavy investments, as opposed to applications and programs that can be easily re-installed from CD. Data backups can cover various time windows (for instance 1 week or 2 months) and is the basis for for long-time archival on DVD or tapes.

What cost would a total data loss cause to your business?

Backup and restore have a clearly defined task: ensure the redundant storage and following from that constant recoverability of mission-critical information within a company. Information that should be backed up includes but is not limited to contacts, plans, bills, tax declarations, bookkeeping information, or e-mails. These and many other types of documents can decide over success or failure, fame or doom for a corporation or profressional. Many of Qustodium's customers have had very good experiences with a combination of the following three building blocks for a backup strategy:

• Local backups for all PCs, laptops and server to a dedicated backup server on the local area network for highest availability and fastest restore in case of accidental deletion or overwriting of documents.
• Remote backup via network (e.g. DSL) to the Qustodium data centre to ensure redundant storage and prevent loss of local backups in case of fire, theft, lightning or water damage. These backups are of course encrypted and are only accessible by you and your designated backup operators.
• Archival to long-term storage media such as DVD or tape at determined intervals, such as the end of every month enable compliance with filing legislation and allow a gap-less archive of all document versions for later review or restoring. The created media can be send via courier to an address of your trust, such as a bank vault.

What are the next steps?

1. Contact Qustodium Internet Security without any commitment
2. Together with you and your experts, Qustodium engineers will create a data and risk profile of your company as outlined above. This data map will be the basis for a effective and affordable backup strategy.
3. After implementing the commonly determined backup strategy, a contract and required service level agreements will be the foundation of a long and reliable collaboration between you and Qustodium, with all rights and responsibilities well laid out and understood.