Suffolk Computer Consultants, Inc. Blog

Data backup can be a bit nerve-wracking to implement, especially as a small business owner with limited knowledge of business IT solutions. One best practice we like to plug for SMBs is the 3-2-1 backup rule, which sounds more complicated than it really is. Today, we’re exploring the details of this approach and how it can change the way you think about backup and disaster recovery as a whole.

While it might not be the most glamorous topic, losing critical information—customer records, financial data, intellectual property—can severely disrupt, or even cripple, a business. At Suffolk Computer Consultants, we specialize in proactive business technology support for organizations, and we consider a robust backup and recovery strategy non-negotiable for resilience.

Think of your data as a core business asset. Protecting it requires a deliberate and multi-layered approach. Here’s a breakdown of how to build a backup and recovery plan that truly safeguards your operations.

Let's talk about something that might not be the most glamorous topic, but is absolutely vital to the health and survival of your business: data backups.

Think of your business data as the lifeblood of your operations. It includes everything from customer records and financial information to crucial project files and intellectual property. Now, imagine a scenario where this lifeblood suddenly stops flowing. What would happen?

It’s World Backup Day! It’s the one day where we bring awareness to the essential process of backing up your organizational and personal data. Let’s go through some of the variables that a comprehensive data backup and recovery plan features to commemorate the “holiday.”

By now, you’ve heard us discuss how data backup is extremely important for every organization. We try to spread awareness of the negative impacts to a business that doesn’t have a comprehensive backup plan in place. Fortunately, data backup has come a long way in the past decade, making it easier, faster, and way more reliable. Let’s take a look at how things have changed in data backup.

Business continuity is a critical element of any organization’s preparations for the future, including how comprehensive the backup is designed to be. Let’s discuss the steps that businesses—especially small ones—need to take to ensure their data is protected.

For your business to achieve true business continuity—meaning you can maintain your operations regardless of disasters or issues—a data backup is a critical element of your preparations.

As such, it is critical that your backup is designed to be as comprehensive and reliable as possible.

The demand for digital storage has skyrocketed over time. While hard disk drives (HDDs) once dominated the market, solid-state drives (SSDs) are now becoming more popular thanks to their speed, durability, and increasing affordability.

That said, HDDs are still in wide use, though they are far more susceptible to failure compared to SSDs. So, how can you spot the signs that your hard drive might be on the verge of failing?

Technology has enabled us to achieve more than ever before, but with that progress comes higher expectations. Increased productivity demands can sometimes feel overwhelming, making it essential to find effective ways to manage tasks. There's a natural limit to how much we can do, however, and certain obstacles can push us to that limit more quickly. Today, we’ll explore two common productivity pitfalls that many face.

Without technology, your business cannot run the way it needs to. If a disaster strikes, there is no telling how much it could affect operations. For example, a hurricane or a cyberattack could disrupt operations to the point where your business cannot function the way it needs to. Today, we want to highlight some of the ways that a disaster recovery system can help you overcome these hurdles.

Data backup is a crucial part of any business operation, but many employees within an organization might not necessarily know or understand how data backup actually works, or even what gets backed up during the process. Today, we want to demystify how data backup typically works and why it’s important to know what gets backed up, and when.

You’ve likely seen many blogs on our feed about data backup and disaster recovery, and that is because it’s an incredibly important solution for businesses of all kinds. Today, we want to look at the 3-2-1 rule and how it can help your business preserve its important assets in the event of a disaster.

As business computing goes, ransomware poses the most significant threat. That’s why it’s imperative for organizations to proactively address this menace head-on. Today, we propose a comprehensive three-part strategy that can help your organization sidestep ransomware.

Ransomware is a real problem; I mean, a real problem. Not only does it create serious problems for any organization that is victimized by it, it is about to be a completely pervasive problem for everyone. It is extremely important for your organization to take the threat of ransomware seriously by implementing a strategy to keep it from being an issue. Today, we offer a three-pronged approach to doing just that.

Digital storage has been evolving with the development of reliable and long-lasting devices with extremely fast storage and massive storage capacity. The innovation of the solid state drive (SSD) has changed the outlook of storage somewhat, but large-capacity SSDs can be expensive. The hard disk drive (HDD) is still a cost-effective alternative, but it is a mechanical device, which, over time, will be prone to failure. 

When a disaster strikes your business and your important data is compromised, can your business recover? Can it recover quick enough for it to not be irreparably damaged? Could you even conduct business without the lost data? How much downtime can your business even take? 

No matter where your business calls home, it will be vulnerable to some sort of disaster, whether it’s a natural disaster that wipes your office off the map or a cyberattack that cripples your data infrastructure. You don’t have to resign yourself to this fate, though; with the appropriate tools, your business can survive just about anything and keep operations going even under the worst circumstances.

A good data backup protects your business’ information (and because of this, the business itself) from a wide variety of threats. Of course, to accomplish this effectively, a data backup needs to itself be secure and reliable. Let’s take a few moments and go over a few practices and policies you would likely find it beneficial to adopt.

When you have a thorough and powerful data backup strategy in place at your business, you are protecting your operations, your employees, and your customers from an array of terrible scenarios. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t think of data loss in the terms it should be considered in, a complete travesty. Today, we thought we would briefly describe the long and short of data backup and recovery practices that can put your business in a position to secure and restore your data should it be corrupted, destroyed, or stolen.

A business’ data needs to be considered a priority, which means that its protection should be prioritized accordingly. One facet of doing so is maintaining a backup with a strategy in compliance to best practices. To accomplish this, your backup should feature something that isn’t often considered a benefit: redundancy.