This blog outlines five key considerations for start-up businesses when backing up data, emphasising the importance of building a cyber-secure culture from the outset.
When operating any business, it is critical to understand how much businesses depend on their business-critical data: customer details, quotes, orders, and payment information. Now, imagine a business trying to operate without them. Every business, no matter the size, should regularly back up their essential data, ensuring these backups are up-to-date and easily restorable. This precaution ensures your business can continue to function in the event of a flood, fire, physical damage, or theft. Additionally, having accessible backups protects you from ransomware attacks, as you won't be vulnerable to blackmail. Here are five essential tips for backing up your data.
Tip #1 - Â Identify What Data You Need to Back Up
Your first step is to identify the essential data without which your business cannot operate. Typically, this includes documents, photos, emails, contacts, and calendars, most of which are stored in a few common folders on your computer, phone, tablet, or network.
Tip #2 - Keep Your Backup Separate from Your Computer
Back up your data on a USB stick, a separate drive, or another computer. Access to these backups should be restricted to ensure they are:
Not accessible by staff.
Not permanently connected (either physically or over a local network) to the device holding the original copy.
Ransomware (and other malware) can automatically infect connected storage, rendering your backup useless. For added security, consider storing your backups in a different location to prevent loss due to fire or theft. Cloud storage solutions are a cost-effective and efficient way to achieve this.
Tip #3 - Consider the Cloud
You may already be using cloud storage in your everyday work and personal life without realising it—unless you run your own email server, your emails are already stored 'in the cloud'.
Cloud storage, where a service provider hosts your data on their infrastructure, ensures your data is physically separate from your location and provides a high level of availability. Service providers offer data storage and web services without the need for significant upfront hardware investments. Many providers offer a limited amount of storage for free, with larger capacities available at minimal cost for small businesses.
Tip #4 - Cloud Security Guidance
Not all service providers are the same, but most have mature and robust security practices. By outsourcing significant parts of your IT services to a provider, you benefit from specialist expertise that smaller organisations might find cost-prohibitive. Before selecting a provider, businesses should evaluate their services and understand what they offer.
Tip #5 - Make Backing Up Part of Your Everyday Business
We understand that backing up data may not seem exciting, and other tasks may feel more urgent. However, many network or cloud storage solutions now offer automatic backups, saving you time and ensuring you always have the latest versions of your files.
Off-the-shelf backup solutions are often easy to set up and affordable, considering the critical protection they provide. When choosing a solution, consider how much data you need to back up and how quickly you need access to it following an incident.
Don’t Forget
At Optimise Training Solutions, we structure our advice based on industry best practices and the guidelines provided by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). This approach ensures that we are safeguarding your business not only for today but also for tomorrow and beyond. With our expert guidance, you can be confident that Optimise Training Solutions are here to help you and your business create a cybersecurity aware culture.
Check out our expert services which we offer to new start-up businesses here.
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