SMB Cybersecurity Training

Business Continuity and System Backup

 

If a natural disaster or cyber-attack affected your business and computers tomorrow, do you have a plan for how to respond and get your business and systems back up and running? Recent ransomware attacks encrypted business data and businesses that could recover that data without paying ransoms were better positioned to continue business operations with fewer interruptions and retain customer trust.

Business Continuity planning can completed in four steps:

  1. Business Impact Analysis. Inventory business critical systems and data required to keep your business running and restore it after an emergency.
  2. Recovery Strategies. Are your systems covered by a backup service? Determine if there are any gaps between your current backup plan and your business requirements and actions to mitigate them.  
  3. Response Plan. Define what actions to take in an emergency, including who is authorized to initiate the response plan, who to notify, and how to restore business operations. Set notification procedures for any event that compromises customer’s personal or financial data.

Test and Update. Train employees on the response plan and test it. Determine how often the plan should be reviewed and updated.

Choosing the Right System Backup Service

Backup service plan costs increase with the quantity of data and systems, number of backups and sites, and restore time. To pick the best backup service for your business, consider the following checklist:

  • Inventory business critical servers, applications, and data
  • Determine if daily, weekly, or monthly backup frequencies are appropriate for systems and data in scope.
  • Work with your service provider to determine how many copies of backup data are appropriate for your business and risk level, and whether these copies will be kept on premise or off-site at another location. Off-site and additional replications offer additional assurances if one site is destroyed, but can significantly increase costs.
  • Understand your restore service levels and the amount of time expected for a partial or full data restore.

Review your backup service agreement to validate all systems are backed up and that your business has the right level of service for your needs and budget.

Ariel IT businessCARE™

Ariel IT offers business continuity planning and data backup and recovery services to its businessCARE™ clients. Onsite backup is included with the businessCARE™ service, and optional offsite backup replication plans are available to meet even the most complex business needs.