Your Business’ Data Backups Are Only As Good As Your Testing Process

Routine data backups are a crucial component of your business’ overall IT infrastructure maintenance process. Your backups are what protects your business in the event of a crisis like a cyber attack, system failure, or power outage. A carefully thought out recovery plan can help your business overcome just about anything life decides to throw at you. But all of the planning goes right out the window if you don’t take the time to thoroughly test it before disaster strikes.

Regular testing of each component of your business’ Data Backup and Recovery Plan is a necessity. Part of the planning process should involve working out a recovery timeline; a realistic evaluation of how long your business can afford to be without access to critical data and applications before the financial damage is more than your business can overcome. Your recovery plan needs to meet this deadline.

The only way to know for sure that your backups are working the way that they should be, and can be accessed quickly to restore your important data is to go through the recovery process. Ideally, your data backups themselves should be monitored on an ongoing basis to make sure they are functioning well, and tested frequently. Your IT provider can remotely test your backups for you as part of your managed services plan.

More than simply making sure that your data is recoverable, and recoverable quickly, it’s important to make sure that your staff knows what to do in the event of an IT disaster. One of the benefits of testing your recovery plan is getting the opportunity to discuss the process with your team, and make sure that each employee knows what role they are expected to play in the process.

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