Prevent data loss this World Backup Day
In celebration of World Backup Day, everyone should pause and think about how they are protecting their data from loss.
Data loss on any scale can be as nightmare for businesses or individuals, making it crucial to have a proper backup strategy in place. The 3-2-1 backup strategy is a popular and effective approach that provides reliable protection against data loss.
The 3-2-1 back-up strategy can be broken down simply:
Keep three copies of your data: The first step is to make sure that you have three copies of your data. This includes the original data and two backup copies. By having three copies, you can ensure that even if one copy is lost or damaged, you still have two more copies to rely on.
Store your data on two different types of media: The next step is to store your data on two different types of media. For example, you could keep one copy on an external hard drive and another on cloud storage. This ensures that if one type of media fails, you still have a backup on a different type of media.
Keep one copy offsite: The final step is to keep one copy of your data offsite. This could be in a different physical location or in cloud storage. This protects your data from disasters such as fires, floods, or theft.
With these steps in place, you must also remember to test your back-ups. Check that what you think is being backed up is actually part of your back-up set, and make sure you have a suitable process to return your back-up data to your live environment if you need to.
By following the 3-2-1 backup strategy, you can be confident that your data is safe and protected from data loss. This strategy ensures that you always have multiple copies of your data, stored on different types of media, and in different locations.
However, understanding how to integrate cloud-only or cloud-first services like Microsoft 365 into this sort of approach can be challenging. There isn't, for example, a button in your Microsoft 365 Admin Center to allow you to download all of your files to an external hard drive, and even if there was, how would it deal with things like your Teams chats, your Forms data, or even the content of the new Loop app?
There are 3rd-party services that specialize in Microsoft 365 backup, and Microsoft has announced that it plans to release its own offering into the space. However, there isn't as much of a consensus around the need for Microsoft 365 back-up as the universal agreement that you on site data should be exposed to a back-up strategy like 3-2-1.
The main reason for this is that Microsoft 365 has in-built features, that, while not back-up, achieve much the same outcome of preventing data loss associated with anything other than a catastrophic failure of Microsoft's own systems. For example, Microsoft 365 allows you to flag data with policies that makes it impossible for it to be deleted, and there are even locks that can be implemented that cannot be defeated by even the most high level administrative access.
Ultimately, your needs in terms of back-up are down to your business needs. Even with a local 3-2-1 strategy, there may be files where you choose not to back-up as there is no consequence to their loss. With cloud back-up the same is true, the more consequential the loss of data would be, the more additional 3rd-party solutions should be sought.
We wish you a great World Backup Day, filled with copious copies of your properly backed up data!
