2017 was definitely the year for ransom-ware attacks and the WannaCry and NotPetya malware mass infections brought this to the forefront of public attention. Now we’re firmly into 2018, we don’t expect the threats to cease, in fact there are some rumours companies are stockpiling crypto-currency ready to pay if their data is lost. If you don’t have adequate protection in place ( you should have, but speak to us if not !) and your business is hit with a ransom-ware attack, expect it to be highly disruptive and for you to lose some or even all of your business data.
Data loss through malware and ransomware is high risk but did you know its not the only risk ? Human error – whoops, why did I just hit delete ? Power outages and server room issues, fire and natural disasters along with unexpected updates and patches are some of the other risks and reasons why data is lost. Every business is susceptible to these risks and you should be too. 
Data-loss is a major disaster for businesses of all shapes and sizes, with approximately 43% of businesses that are faced with data-loss not surviving the hit. Of the businesses that do backup their data 34% never test their backups and of those who do 77% find that their backups don’t actually work when you need them. Data loss has numerous causes with the biggest cause actually being hardware failure, and with 10% of laptops and 6% of PC’s encountering data loss every year, is your business prepared? It is vitally important for businesses to have a backup strategy in place and the 3-2-1 rule is a perfect starting point.
The 3-2-1 Backup Rule:
3. You should have at least three copies of your data – your primary data and two backups, all stored in different places.
2. Your copies should be stored on two different types of media – ‘Media’ means hard disks, tapes, online backup etc. Using two or more different types of media will protect against different types of technology failures.
1. You should keep one backup copy offsite – The idea is to keep one copy away from the location of the primary backups, thus reducing the risk of losing all backups. In this case Cloud backup can be a very good choice.
The 3-2-1 rule is very general and so it works for all data types and all environment types (physical and virtual). When backing up virtual VMware or Hyper-V environments, the rule becomes the ‘3-2-1-0 Backup rule’. Where the 0 represents the lack of errors during the automatic recoverability of every backup with services such as Veeam Secure Backup.
Practical Networks recommend all businesses to plan, prepare and test for data loss. If you are unsure about your data protection and backup strategy or worried about ransom-ware attacks, please call us on 01723 587250 and speak to one of our experienced consultants.
Share this:
