The 4 S’s of Data Backup and Recovery: Scale, Simplicity, Security, and Speed
Faster data recovery speeds can significantly minimize operational risks arising from unplanned downtime.
- Data backup and recovery comprises generating and storing copies of essential data to protect organizations against threats like software corruption, inadvertent deletion, and cyber attacks.
- Creating frequent data backups is critical to ensure business continuity, as the process allows businesses to recover without losses from unplanned events occurring on their computer networks.
Modern businesses are highly data-dependent. The unexpected unavailability of data, whether due to cyber attacks, software corruption, or accidents at the workplace, can severely impede the productivity of the workforce and networks and impact profit margins. Consequently, data backup and recovery solutions are crucial to running a modern business.
Despite these issues, data backup and recovery remain significantly overlooked by organizations worldwide. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 60% of data backup processes fail to account for complete organizational data, while half of all data recovery attempts do not work, resulting in over 45% of unplanned downtime instances. Let us look at some of the most critical aspects that backup recovery solutions should have.
Understanding the 4 S’s of Data Backup and Recovery
According to a recent study by Aberdeen Strategy & Research, data backup and recovery tools are considered high-value cybersecurity investments for businesses, surpassing endpoint security, multifactor authentication (MFA), data governance, security information and event management (SIEM), and more. Data backup tools minimize risk, improve operational efficiency, and simplify achieving strategic outcomes.
How Businesses Prioritize Cybersecurity Tech
Source: Aberdeen Strategy & Research
Modern data backup and recovery solutions should incorporate characteristics such as speed of recovery, scalability, data security and compliance, and simplicity in operations. They should have the following features.
- Modern data management and recovery solutions should function with the same efficiency level regardless of the type and volume of data that needs to be protected, allowing for scalability in businesses.
- Data backup solutions must be simple to set up and use in dynamic business environments, allowing teams to focus more on strategically vital business operations.
- Some of the most common causes of data loss are unauthorized access to credentials, accidents, cyberattacks, and software corruption. Consequently, data backup and recovery solutions should be capable of upholding security and compliance standards. Such tools should allow for complete transparency, with strong authentication and air-gapped setups.
- The primary role of data recovery tools is to restart an organization’s operations with minimal delay after a data loss incident. Unplanned downtime of resources can cost businesses dearly. So, a data recovery solution should implement advanced techniques to bolster speed and minimize the time required to run recovery processes.
How Data Backup and Recovery Generate Value for Businesses
Source: Aberdeen Strategy & Research
See More: How to Prioritize Cost Optimization for Cloud Storage Investments
How Critical Is Optimized Data Recovery?
According to Aberdeen Strategy & Research, between Q1 2020 and Q4 2021, the average downtime after a ransomware event ranged between 15-23 days (15 working days x 8 hours/day = 120 working hours), accounting for a $100,000 loss per user each year. This is a significant loss to the productivity of any organization.
In instances such as ransomware events, a fast data recovery speed can significantly reduce losses arising from unplanned downtime. Similarly, threats such as unauthorized access or accidents by team members can hurt business-critical systems and disrupt revenue-generating processes. These issues can cost an organization millions, depending on the business size.
The Role of Data Recovery Speed in Business Value
Source: Aberdeen Strategy & Research
As seen above, the recovery speed is a key factor businesses consider for such scenarios. Testing a data backup and recovery solution in a cloud-native environment can be of great value in choosing data recovery options.
In addition, business continuity can be considered among the most important objectives for data recovery and backup solutions. Customized virtual failovers are a popular method to protect data that gives better prospects for continuity of operations, allowing almost instant recovery- even in cases where the entire network fails.
Combining data protection features with disaster-recovery-as-a-service offerings can enable simplified options through the cloud, making it an optimized strategy to maintain IT infrastructure. With the continuously rising sophistication and repercussions of cybercrime, data protection and recovery investments must increase.
See More: Business Transformation: 5 Data Trends To Drive Efficiency
Considering how important data backup and recovery are and their role in preventing disruptions, businesses will do well to keep their backup and recovery infrastructure up to date. These operations will prove especially valuable in new, cloud-native environments and cater to organizational scaling and growth.
What are a few more ways organizations can improve data backup and recovery? Share your thoughts with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
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