General Backup ArticlesThe Value of Data Backup
As a business leader you value your business and the business data at its heart: client records, proposals, invoices, production, lists, presentations. Loss of data can disrupt business life and destroy business value. Be it human error, theft flood or virus attack. Your two most important assets are data & time. Lose access to data and you've lost time.
Most businesses backup data using tape backup; but is it done daily? Who in the company is responsible for making sure it happens? Are they qualified and is it what they're paid for? Are tapes stored securely off-site? Will the restore actually work when it's needed?
Here are some sobering statistics: 99% of all business do not do a daily backup, 60% of backups are incomplete, 50% of restores fail, only 25% of tapes stored off-site and end user compliance with backups is only 8%.
And the consequences of this can be severe:
- "On average, by the 6th day of a major data loss, companies experience a 25% loss in daily revenue. By day 25 it is 40%."
- "The average cost to a UK SME of a virus attack is £843 with an average downtime of 7.2 hours."
- "43% of companies that experience a severe data loss disaster, and that have no recovery plan in place, never re-open."
"You must safeguard your own or anyone else's data, by appropriate precautions against loss, corruption or unauthorized disclosure" - Data Protection Act, 1998
