Backups are more common than you think. Every day you most likely have a backup in place, whether it be someone who can cover for you to watch your puppy if something interrupts your schedule or even that spare tyre that is in your car in case of a flat.

Backup and recovery plans apply to just about everything that you can think of in your daily life. Let's focus on your business now and look at top reasons why you really need to have a secure and reliable backup solution.

We all make mistakes. Mistakes happen more than we would like to admit. Emails and documents containing some type of virus are accidentally opened all the time while critical documents are unintentionally deleted. One way to combat these problems is to continually backup your data and therefore, allow for the ability to restore your data. Or more importantly, recover the file prior to it being deleted.

Audit and compliance requirements. Many, if not most organisations are required to keep records for extended periods of time depending on local or industry requirements. There may come a time when an audit forces your business to look at something from a few years ago. The big mistake here is that most assume that data is available on a computer when in fact it may not be. Relying on one copy of the data may be a mistake that you just don't want to have to deal with when it comes to an audit. Creating offsite backups of critical data can save you time and money with less headaches for all involved. Governing agencies won't really care if you say that you had a data disaster. It is critical for your business to remain compliant.

Avoid deadly downtime. Studies show that 40-60% of small businesses won't reopen after data loss. Of companies that suffer catastrophic data loss, 43% never reopen and 51% close within two years. Not every data loss event is caused by a disaster, human errors can also cause data catastrophes. The solution is to be sure to have an effective backup and disaster recovery plan in place that will help mitigate these types of data threats. Planning and preparing ahead of time when it comes to data security and availability can allow your business to be the winner.

Stay a step ahead of your competitors. If your organisation experiences a disaster, it will be critical to get back online and up and running as fast as possible. It is a race to remain competitive while winning over other businesses. A pre-planned backup strategy means that you can be that much more prepared and win the business while others are struggling to get back to business as usual. You will survive the data disaster while others may not be so lucky.

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over? Doing it right the first time will save time and money when it comes to protecting your data. If you don't have backups, you may only be able to recover some of your data and you may never know what critical data is really missing. Major data loss may mean re-creating or re-doing everything that has ever been done at your business and very rarely do companies survive these types of data losses.

The leading causes of data loss are similar in just about every type of business. Most of us believe that once the data is saved to a computer that it's safe and can always be accessed. The reality is that backing up data is critical - because data loss is unpredictable.

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