As World Backup Day 2018 approaches, it is worth the time and effort to sit down and take a look at your backup strategy. What would you do if you lost everything? Could your business survive? What happens if you lose your patient data, your email or even your financial data? If your server crashes and requires a rebuild, how long can you afford to be without data? How will you handle patients, payroll, and accounting? What is the impact on your business?
In April 2017, Small Business Trends reported the following:
- 140,000 hard drives fail in the US each week
- 29% of hard drive failures are caused by accident
- 60% of small businesses that lose their data will shut down within 6 months
- 58% of small businesses are not prepared for a data loss
Can your business afford to be one of those statistics?
Although there is no such thing as a perfect backup plan, having a plan is a good start. As technology progresses, this plan should be updated and modified to accommodate new strategies.
In a 2012 paper for US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team), Carnegie Mellon recommended the 3-2-1 method in their publication titled: Data Backup Options. This plan will help increase your chances of recovering lost or corrupted data.
The method provides three simple steps:
- Keep 3 copies of your important data: 1 primary and 2 backups
- Keep the files on 2 different media types to protect against different types of hazards
- Store 1 copy offsite (outside your business facility)
Besides the above, in order to remain HIPAA and HITECH compliant, whatever methods you use must be encrypted and secure.
Your backup plan should also include testing data recovery, documenting how long it will take to recover your critical data, understanding the priority of the data you restore and knowing what should be restored first.
The purpose of World Backup Day is to gain awareness of the need to backup your data and pledge to do so. If all this posting has done is made you think about backing up your data, at least it made you think!
