Backup data

Have you ever thought about how much you need important business data such as payment information, orders, or customer details? How long would you be able to function without
them? What would happen if you lost this data in a flood, fire, damage, or theft, for example?
According to Statista.com, 68% of companies will have encountered ransomware in 2021, and over 70% in 2022. The NUKIB reports a 71% increase in ransomware attacks in the Czech Republic in year 21 compared to 2020, with the majority of ransomware incidents in the Czech Republic occurring in April and November. In April, ransomware attacks accounted for half of all cyber incidents reported by the NUKIB for the year.
What if you came into work in the morning, booted up your computer, and found everything was gone? Instead of your data, Donald Trump is waving at you, or you get a Christmas card telling you that your data is encrypted and the only way to get it is to pay a ransom or have all your data deleted or posted on the network. How do you proceed? What do you do to stop your business from going under, as happened to the English company “The Heritage Company”, where a ransomware attack just before Christmas left 300 people out of work and the company closed after 61 years. And if you stop, how long will it take you to get going again? The attackers wanted $6 million from Travelex, and it took the company four months to get back up and running. Have you calculated how much one day of downtime costs?
All businesses, regardless of size, should regularly back up their important data and make sure those backups are up to date and can be restored. This will ensure that your business continues to operate. Plus, if you have backups of your data that you can quickly restore, you can’t be blackmailed by ransomware attacks.
Today, we’ve put together a basic data backup strategy for you.

1) As a first step, you need to know what data is important enough to you that you need to back it up, backing up may not be the cheapest thing to do, so prioritize. The data categories will give you an idea of which data to back up the most, depending on what the financial impact of losing it would be for you.

2) Consider how often you want to back up and what medium will be best for your needs.
There are plenty of backup media. Whether it’s hard drives, snapshots, remote data centers, optical media such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, tapes, external hard drives, cloud storage, or even floppy disk and punched labels. One of the questions you need to consider when deciding where to store your backup copy is;

How long will I need to keep this backup?
If you know the answer to this question, it will be easier to figure out what media to store the files on. You also need to consider price, reliability, speed, availability, and usability in your environment and compatibility with your system, capacity, and media life depending on the conditions of the storage location, security.

3) Decide how many backups to make

We recommend following at least the 3-2-1 principle which states:
3 = Make one primary backup and two copies of your data

2 = Store backups on at least two different types of media.

1 = Keep at least one off-site backup.

4) Determine who will have access and permissions to handle the data and backups.
Everyone who has access to backups should have only the minimum privileges, and certainly, no more than necessary to perform their daily work. For occasional manipulation of backups, privileges can be added only as needed for specific activities and removed again as tasks are completed. This should be implemented for all employees, including Administrators and Management.

5) Keep backups separate from the computer and network.
Whether it is on a USB, a separate drive, or a separate computer, but access to backup data should be restricted so that:

the backups are not accessible to staff

the backups are not permanently connected (either physically or via a local network) to the
device containing the original copy

6) Encrypt your backups
Encrypting your backups is a best security practice that helps protect your organization’s confidential information. Encrypting backups is not only important for business continuity and disaster recovery but also to improve the overall security of your organization.

7) Regularly test and monitor your backups
It is very important that you test your backups regularly. If you don’t test your backups regularly and monitor the results of that testing, you may find that when the time comes that you need them, you find that your backups don’t actually work, or they have been overwritten and you no longer have them, or you don’t know how to restore them effectively. Similarly, every restore takes time, depending on the type of backup media you choose or the extent of the damage. That’s why it’s good to know how quickly you are able to restore your operation. As the saying goes “time is money” and you need to have a good calculation of how long it will take you to restore and how much time out of service will cost you.
Ransomware (and other malware) can often move to attached storage automatically, which means that any such backup can also be infected, putting the backup under the control of the attackers along with the original, and you will lose that backup. For greater resilience, you should consider storing backups on multiple media in multiple locations so that, in case of theft, but perhaps also fire and other threats, you can avoid losing all copies.
Data loss can occur for a variety of reasons such as:
Database migration
Software corruption
Local natural disaster
Ransomware attack
Hard drive failure
Theft Human error

And because there are many different ways to lose data, there are multiple ways to protect data. Don’t underestimate data backup, because data is one of the most important parts of your business. Start backup your data for example with Simple backups or other providers.