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Article · Mar 31, 2017

Three ways to protect your business data on World Backup Day

Today is one of Carbonite's favorite days of the year—World Backup Day. Each year on March 31st, World Backup Day offers all of us a reminder to take critical steps to prevent data loss. So don't be an April fool, back up your data today.

World Backup Day was first observed in 2011—it began as an independent initiative launched by users on Reddit. The objective of World Backup Day is to raise awareness about the importance of regular backups and encourage people to protect data in our increasingly digitized world.

So, how should you celebrate World Backup Day? By taking action to strengthen your business's backup strategy. You can start with these three steps:

1. Make sure you're backing up the right data
Here's a good way to do it:

  • Make a list of all the places in your IT infrastructure where mission-critical data is stored. That might include servers in your data center with databases on them, documents on file servers, and user files located on laptop and desktop hard drives. The data may also be located in cloud-based systems such as Microsoft Office 365.
  • Once you have a list of all the data you don’t want to lose, go into your backup system and make sure it’s configured so that each of those items are actually being backed up automatically and continuously.

2. Get schooled on ransomware protection strategies
Ransomware is a major epidemic right now. Ransomware computer viruses are designed by cybercriminals to encrypt your important data and hold it hostage until a ransom is paid. Here are some important ways to protect against ransomware:

  • Do not open email attachments from unknown senders
  • Do not click on links inside emails from unknown senders
  • Keep firewall and antivirus software up to date
  • Keep business applications updated and be diligent about applying security patches when they're released
  • Make sure important files are backed up and easily recoverable

Visit this page for more expert advice on how to protect your business from ransomware.

3. Test your backup system’s restore capabilities
A backup system is only as good as its ability to restore data in a usable state that would have otherwise been lost. That’s why it’s a good idea to test the backup system’s restore capabilities on a regular basis. All you need to do is identify some important files and retrieve them from your backup system. Once restored, open the file as you would the original to make sure it was restored properly. Database-driven applications can be more finicky and may require complete sets of files to be restored to ensure that there are no problems, but it’s worth testing before your business has to depend on it to run.

Remember, if you haven't already invested in a high-quality backup and disaster recovery solution for your business, World Backup Day is a fine time to do so. Visit Carbonite and start protecting your data today!

Author

Mark Brunelli

Senior Writer

Mark Brunelli is a Senior Writer on the Corporate Marketing team at Carbonite. He blogs about Carbonite happenings and IT industry trends.

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