A backup is one of the most important safety nets a business can have.
Files can be lost through ransomware, hardware failure, accidental deletion, software problems, theft, or natural disasters. Even cloud services are not a complete replacement for a carefully planned backup strategy.
A strong backup plan should protect important servers, workstations, cloud data, and business applications. It should also include more than one copy of important information.
Many businesses follow the idea that backups should exist in multiple locations and that at least one copy should be isolated from the main network. This reduces the chance that ransomware can encrypt both the live data and the backup at the same time.
Backups should also be tested. A backup that cannot be restored is not useful when a real emergency happens.
The best question is not simply, “Do we have backups?” The better questions are, “What are we backing up, how often, where are the copies stored, and how quickly can we recover?”