Backups are great. We all love to know our data is safe and sound. But having a warm fuzzy feeling isn’t a strong business case. At Blue Sky we adopt and strongly advise a full Disaster Recovery review process to ensure a business can continue to function effectively in the event of any given scenario.
We recommend the 3-2-1 approach to data: 3 copies of critical data in 2 locations at any 1 time. Following our own advice has averted a couple of personal data-loss crises and brings peace of mind.
Backups are just a cog in the wheel of Disaster Recovery. Data protection is essential but being able to restore it and use it when needed is the business requirement.
We advocate preparing for different scenarios – for most businesses this isn’t an arduous process. We’ve all been thinking about our different types of data thanks to GDPR – extending this process to think through backup, data retention and disaster recovery strategies should be easier now. Every cloud has a silver lining!
Here are a few points we consider when looking at Disaster Recovery & Backups:
Backups
- Who has access to them?
- When was your last full restore? Or any restore?
- What’s the retention/overwriting policy?
- Where’s the data stored?
- Is the data encrypted?
Disaster Recovery (Main Office Offline & Inaccessible)
- Will your telephone system work?
- Are any of your services locked to office related IPs or VPNs?
- What paper records might you need access to?
- Can your staff carry on working elsewhere?
- How will you communicate with your staff?
Disaster Recovery (Hack/Malware Attack)
- How will you communicate with your staff & customers?
- Do you need to report the incident to the ICO?
- How will you identify who’s infected/compromised?
We can help – pick up the phone or drop us an email, tweet or whatever suits; we’re always happy to talk and frequently that’s all it takes; a quick call to one of our team can prompt all the right questions to ask.
Blue Sky Infrastructure Engineer