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Directive Blogs

Directive has been serving the Oneonta area since 1993, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

How to Effectively Measure and Use Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Metrics

How often do you think about your data backup system? If you’re like most businesses, it’s something that you will likely set up, then quickly forget about, provided you haven’t had to use it. Still, having one is essential to any modern business, and building it with clear outcomes and metrics in mind will help you make your data backup system more effective for the moments when you’re glad you have it.

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World Backup Day Promotes Solid Data Backup Practices

Annually, on March 31st, World Backup Day serves as a dedicated reminder to highlight the pivotal role of regular data backups in ensuring the seamless flow of information. While this awareness day effectively emphasizes a foundational best practice, we strongly advocate for an ongoing commitment to the continuous maintenance and safeguarding of backups, extending well beyond the confines of a single day.

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Here are the Basics of the 3-2-1 Backup Rule

The 3-2-1 rule is a pretty standard reference for data backup and disaster recovery, but what does this rule actually entail? Today, we want to explain perhaps the most important concept to prolonging the life of your business, even in the face of difficult and trying circumstances.

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3 Tips for More Effective Data Backup and Disaster Recovery

Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) are incredibly important elements of any successful business, as without them, you’re just one disaster away from a world-shattering wake-up call. We take a strategic approach to data backup and disaster recovery that considers your daily data backup needs while recognizing its long-term benefits. Let’s discuss how you can ensure that your business can use BDR to survive any potential threat the world throws at it.

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Remember World Backup Day is March 31st

World Backup Day, observed on March 31st annually, serves as a designated occasion to underscore the critical importance of regular data backups for ensuring data continuity. Although this day effectively highlights a fundamental best practice, we firmly advocate for a continuous commitment to maintaining and safeguarding backups rather than confining such awareness to a single day.

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You Need to Have a Business Continuity Plan for Your SMB

Business technology is known to be remarkably finicky, particularly if you do not have the requisite knowledge to manage and maintain it. After all, there is a reason why you hire an IT department or a managed service provider to handle this role. What happens if your technology fails, though? Do you have a plan in place? What does a plan like this even look like, anyway? Let’s dig into the details.

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How You Backup Your Data is a Crucial Consideration

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery are essential components of any modern business. As businesses become increasingly reliant on digital data, it's essential to have strategies in place to ensure that your data is safe and secure in the event of a disaster. Let’s cover the key components of an effective Disaster Recovery strategy to ensure the safety of your business' data backup. Read on to learn more about Disaster Recovery strategies and how to best protect your business data.

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Are Your Recovery Expectations Lined Up with Your Capabilities?

Your business’ backup and disaster recovery preparations are a critical part of your continued success as an organization, specifically, how they are measured by two key metrics: your recovery time objective (RTO) and your recovery point objective (RPO).

However, it’s important that you are able to determine what your organization can support in terms of your recovery time and recovery point objectives… but how does one do that?

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Data Backup Strategies Are Constantly Innovating

The modern business technology market is filled with exciting innovations, but one area that doesn't quite capture the imagination is data backup. Perhaps backup is not the most thrilling topic, but nevertheless, the growing demand for enhanced data security and redundancy in businesses is driving developers to push the boundaries of the technology, creating more advanced features to meet the growing demand for redundancy. Today, we take a look at three intriguing features of these emerging data backup solutions.

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Disaster Recovery as a Service is a Way to Insulate Your Business From Harm

In an era where businesses rely heavily on data and technology, the need for comprehensive disaster recovery solutions has never been more critical. The stakes are high when it comes to safeguarding your company's digital assets and ensuring business continuity in the face of unforeseen disasters. This is where Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) comes into play.

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Creating a Powerful Backup Strategy

Data is the lifeblood of a business. In the event of unforeseen circumstances such as hardware failure, malware attacks, or human error, having a well-designed backup and data recovery strategy in place becomes paramount. Today, we try and guide you through the process of creating a robust backup and data recovery strategy, ensuring the safety and accessibility of your data.

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You Won’t Believe the Cost of Getting Caught Without Backup

Having data redundancy is something that sounds like a bad thing. After all, redundancy is typically viewed as a reason for inefficiency. In the case of having your data and computing environments backed up, you are trying to build redundancy. Today, let’s take a look at some situations that a business can run into should they neglect to have a proper backup.

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What is a BDR and Why Does Your Organization Need One?

Data backup always sounds like a simple process, but if you truly want to rely on your backup, it needs to be absolutely infallible. That is the objective behind an IT appliance known as the BDR, which stands for Backup and Disaster Recovery.

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How to Get Back Into Your Multi-Factor Authentication Account

Multi-factor authentication is great when it works, but when it doesn’t, it can leave you in a pretty difficult situation. After all, what happens when all of a sudden, you cannot access your secondary authentication methods? We’re here to help you bypass this particularly challenging and frustrating scenario.

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Data Backup Truly Protects a Business

Data backup is a must-have for every business, but it isn’t enough to just copy your data. You will need to have a data recovery strategy in place to ensure that your business can effectively respond after a data loss incident. Today, we’ll take a look at why considering your recovery strategy early is important, and how to prioritize it with everything else going on with your business.

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What Actually Happens to Deleted Data?

Chances are, you’ve gone through some old files and weeded through them, deleting what is no longer needed. This is especially important when you are upgrading your storage and getting rid of your existing storage media or an old computer. Let’s talk about what really happens when you’re doing so—chances are, you may be overlooking a serious security issue.

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Get Your Data Protected with BDR

Running a business is stressful, but so is thinking about a future where that business (and its data) no longer exists. If you’re not careful with your preparedness, you could stare down a disaster with no hopes of recovery. This is why we urge you to take proactive action now—so you can prevent these kinds of scenarios from taking your business off the market for good.

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You Can’t Afford to Ignore Your Data Backup

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that a lot can go wrong with business just about every day. If something were to go horribly wrong and you lost access to your data infrastructure, what would you do? Let’s take a look at some of these disaster scenarios and how much data backup and disaster recovery can make a difference for your organization.

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What Are You Going to Do When Disaster Strikes?

When we are talking about the continuity of your business, we typically use the colloquialism “disaster” for just about anything that could put the brakes on your business’ ability to do business. But what happens when that “disaster” is an actual disaster and threatens to derail your business completely? Today, we take a look at some disaster preparedness tips that can quite literally save your business from ruin. 

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Prepare for These 4 Types of Disasters Before It’s Too Late

Businesses of all industries and sizes need to account for various disasters that could sink operations and lead to considerable costs associated with downtime. It is your responsibility as a business owner to identify what these disasters are and take steps toward addressing them, preferably before they become major problems that cost your organization time and money.

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Data Backup is More Important Than You Think

All businesses store and transmit data on a regular basis. From financial spreadsheets to client information to employee records, there is no shortage of data required by most organizations to maintain operations. What would you do if all that data were to suddenly vanish into thin air, or worse, be stolen by hackers?

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Counting the Reasons for the 3-2-1 Data Backup Rule

I hope I don’t have to tell you how important your business’ data is to its continued survival, just as I hope I don’t need to explain why this makes this data a priority to protect, regardless of your business’ size. What I do want to explain is the concept of the 3-2-1 Rule and how it pertains to your data backup, and why we would recommend that one for your business’ purposes.

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Redundancy Can Be a Good Thing

Data is the backbone of any modern business. Since your organization relies so much on it, you need to have measures put into place to ensure that your business can access it in some way, shape or form at all times. This is easier said than done, especially for a business on a budget. We’ll walk you through how you can implement a comprehensive data backup solution to protect your organization.

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World Backup Day Highlights the Importance of Backup Practices

March 31 is World Backup Day. Data is a commodity, but unlike other commodities--it can be replicated without hurting its value. As a result, data backup has become a critical need for the modern business. World Backup Day has been created to remind people to protect their assets by backing up their files.

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Solid Data Recovery Strategies Can Get You Through Tough Situations

As most people know, data backup is important, and when things go wrong you’ll be glad your business has it. The thing is, it’s not enough to have a copy of your data when you need to restore it, you’ll also need a recovery strategy. This is because getting your data back working for you is arguably as important as any other part of the process. Today, we’ll take a look at data recovery strategies that will get your business back on track after a disaster.

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Why You Need to Prioritize Backup and Recovery

It doesn’t take a lot of consideration to know that your business is extremely limited without its data. There are dozens of antivirus solutions on the market for this very reason. One of the best ways to protect your digital assets is to back up data using a reliable backup platform. In today’s blog, we’ll go over a few basic considerations to make if you want a data backup that you can trust.

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Solid Backup Helps Build Continuity

With a lot of business owners being extra cautious about their spending and doing what they can to prevent unexpected interruptions they are doing everything they can to prevent data loss. This month, we thought we would tell you how data redundancy can help towards this goal.

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Businesses Need Data Backup to Manage Risk

If there is one thing we tell every would-be client of ours, it is that it is essential that they secure their data with a comprehensive backup and recovery system. This is not to make our lives easier or to sell products, it is a fact, and said strictly for their own benefit. Even the smallest organizations need protection against situations that could put all their staff’s hard work in jeopardy. Let’s take a look at why backup is so important.

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Structure Your Backup Platform to Your Business’ Needs

There are a lot of different ways that companies and organizations approach data backup, ranging from backing up everything to backing up literally nothing (which we do not recommend). In many ways, backup is simply a form of insurance—the difference being that you’re investing in a solution to a problem, rather than a means to cover your business’ damages.

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Backup Delivers Peace of Mind in Times of Crisis

With most businesses dipping into their disaster recovery strategies, and millions of workers either out of work or working remotely, it is honestly a great time to remind you that March 31st is World Backup Day. This is a day where we help promote the idea of taking backups of your crucial IT systems to ensure that you have access to your important information if a disaster were to strike your business.

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Hit Back Hard Against Malware

The threat landscape is filled with more types of malware than ever. To keep your business’ network running effectively, it’s important to have a strategy to keep malware out. Today, we’ll talk about a few basics you should know to keep your cybersecurity strategy working properly.

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A Backup Protects Your Business from Issues of All Kinds

Data has effectively become another currency - and just like any other currency, some is much more valuable than others. This is especially the case where your business’ data is concerned, and why it is so crucial that you keep it safe.

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A Brief Review of Backup Strategies

For the modern business, not having a backup system in place is inexcusable. If you use digital data to run your business, you need to protect the data you can’t replace by having it backed up regularly. Some businesses have been around long enough to have files that don’t have any practical application in the course of business. You don’t need this data, and you don’t need a copy of it. Today, we will discuss how to select and choose which pieces of data you should seek to protect. 

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Understanding Disaster Recovery: RTO and RPO

In business, having contingencies for potential problems tends to be advantageous for the business that wants to stave off ruin. When you are dealing with information technology--specifically data--ensuring that it is protected against loss in the face of the litany of threats out there is an undertaking in itself. A disaster recovery strategy is created to govern the processes a business develops to recover to restore operations in a manner that will keep the business in business. This month we take a look at two of the core variables of a disaster recovery strategy: RPO and RTO.

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Everything You Need to Know About Data Backup

You know the phrase, “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket?” 

The idiom comes from the novel Don Quixote, and is used as a lesson to not put all of your efforts and success on a single thing. For computing, we say it like this:

“Don’t put all of your data in only one place… or else.”

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Backup and Disaster Recovery Can Keep You from Losing It All

Backup and disaster recovery (BDR) might seem like a singular process, but in reality it’s more of a combination of processes that work in tandem with each other. Backup and disaster recovery both require a different perspective and approach in order to make sure they play nicely with each other. We’ll attempt to address this difference and give you the information needed to make the best decisions possible for your solution.

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A BDR Can Limit Organizational Downtime

Businesses need to be extremely careful about how they protect their interests, but just in case something unfortunate happens, you want to have measures in place to guarantee that your future is secure. To this end, data backup and disaster recovery is critical. We’ll walk you through what you need to know about implementing data backup and disaster recovery, including the best way to make it happen.

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Don’t Fail to Backup Your Data

Often times it’s not the big bad hackers out there that pose the biggest threat to your organization's continued survival. More often than not, it’s simple issues that create a world of problems for your business. One common way that an otherwise sound business plan could be disrupted is through an unexpected disaster derailing operations without having an adequate data backup solution in place.

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Why You Need to Maintain a Data Backup

With World Backup Day coming and going approximately one month ago, it hasn’t been long since we should all have been reminded of the importance of data backup. Regardless, there is never a bad time to discuss the harsh realities of business data loss, and how businesses can avoid it.

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BDR Is Better Than Just Data Backup Alone

Maintaining a proper data backup system is one of the most important parts of business continuity, even if it’s something you’d rather not think about. If you don’t take data backup seriously, your organization is at considerably greater risk compared to what it would be like if you had it. We’ll walk you through the proper steps toward making your organization’s future more secure through data backup.

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How to Build a Better Backup Strategy for Your Business

Business disasters come in all shapes and sizes, which makes it all the more important that you take the time to prepare for those that your business may be susceptible to. This strategy needs to contain numerous considerations, based on the scenario at hand. After all, there is no shortage of events that can lead to disaster in the business world.

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What Can You Do to Improve Data Recovery?

Let’s face it; nobody wants to talk about disaster recovery, as even invoking these words makes the possibility a reality. Unfortunately, this is something that has to be discussed, as your business depends on it. This might seem like hyperbole, but if you knew what is at stake, you’d likely agree with us.

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Find a Successful Data Recovery Balance

Businesses deal with compromises every day, whether it’s leaving late to let someone else get an early out or coming in on your day off to get a critical project finished on time. One of the compromises you absolutely don’t want to leave out is your business’ future. It’s up to you to acquire a solution that minimizes downtime without costing your organization an arm and a leg, but this is much easier said than done.

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3 Data Recovery Issues to Consider

Even with a data recovery strategy, you can’t expect all problems related to data continuity to be resolved simply by having a strategy in place. Take a moment to ask yourself if you have the right strategy for your business’ needs. Below you will find several considerations to keep in mind when planning your data backup system, as well as how to make it happen.

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3 Backup Nightmares You Don’t Want to Happen to You

Your business needs to have data backup and disaster recovery, period. There is no exception to this rule. The hard truth of the matter is that your business is risking far too much by not implementing data backup and disaster recovery. Today, we’ll examine scenarios in which a business might find its data threatened, as well as how modern businesses can keep their data safe, even when the world seems out to get them.

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Protect Your Business This Year with a BDR

There is a lot on the line for any business when disaster strikes. Is your business ready for a data loss incident? Every year people from all over the world make resolutions as the new year commences; and, this year will be no different. For the business owner hoping to mitigate their exposure to downtime and client backlash in the face of an event like this, having a plan in place is essential to seeing a positive resolution to a bad situation. We’ll go through what constitutes a good backup solution, and what goals you need to prioritize to get your business in a position to succeed if it is put in a tight spot.

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Would You Be “Happy” to Lose 24 Hours’ Worth of Data?

When we talk about best practices, we are typically referring to the practices used by successful companies to garner the best results. A new study by Disaster Recovery has shown that, as backup and recovery solutions go, enterprises are providing some pretty disappointing results as many fail to continuously back up their data and it results in additional inherent risk.

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A Good Data Backup Can Save Your Bacon

Data backup. It’s something that all businesses need, but not all businesses know how to approach the implementation of it. This is largely due to the tendency to underestimate how disastrous data loss scenarios can be for their business. You know how it goes; it’s impossible, until it happens. Thankfully, you can significantly reduce the damage done by data loss incidents with a little bit of preventative, proactive thought and a comprehensive backup system.

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How Much Damage Can The Weather Do To Your Business? Lots.

Nobody ever wants to admit that their business has a problem with security. Unfortunately, as the one responsible for the future of your organization, you have to consider all possible outcomes of any potential data loss incident. Furthermore, many of these incidents are beyond your control. Thankfully, you can soothe the pain of a data loss disaster by thinking ahead and planning for the worst.

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3 Steps to Successful Business Continuity Planning

By now, you’ve probably heard about the importance of business continuity and disaster recovery planning for small businesses. According to FEMA, more businesses have business continuity plans than ever before. With so many SMBs looking to secure their future, there are still a few aspects of business continuity planning that today’s business need to comprehend. After all, there is more to it than just data backup. Disaster recovery is something that needs to be planned, practiced and updated.

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Backups Are Essential For The Businesses Of Today

Today most companies utilize computers in the dissemination of their services. Whether you run an office that deploys dozens of computers and multiple servers, a busy restaurant with a full-scale point of sale system, or a contractor that only needs one computer with invoicing software, you depend on your data. Since most businesses also provide goods and services for many people that indirectly depend on it, having a plan to protect the business from potential devastation is important.

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Protect Yourself Against Bad Luck With Data Backup

Whether you are suspicious or not, today seems like a good day to talk out what can happen if some bad luck interferes with your business. Disasters can come in all shapes and sizes, from a freak storm destroying your place of business and every IT component you had inside, to an employee whose path was crossed by a black cat accidentally spilling their coffee on their keyboard as they access some key data.

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Business Continuity Allows You to Keep Your Business Safe

It should come as no surprise that the practice of business continuity planning is one that every business needs to undergo. This planning serves as essentially your only insurance against some form of data disaster or another. Consider your own business for a moment--could it survive a fire, a critical failure in part of your infrastructure, or theft? With a business continuity plan, there’s a chance it just might.

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Just How Important Is the Data Recovery Process?

Data recovery can make your break your business’ continuity plan, and you absolutely cannot underestimate how important this is for the future of your organization. There are countless ways your business could lose data, and if you encounter even a single one of them, your organization could be put at serious risk. We’ll take a look at operational data loss and how your organization needs to strategize data recovery.

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Getting Back to Basics with Data Backup

It’s no industry secret that one of the most important pieces of IT any business should have is a data backup solution. However, this is like saying that every business should have a plant: the type of plant, and (by extension) the type of data backup, matters. You want a data backup that is more like a peace lily or a cactus, hardy and resilient, and less like a basil plant or orchid, high-maintenance and requiring very specific conditions to prosper.

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Are You Properly Backing Up Your Business?

It’s critical that you protect your business’ important assets, including perhaps the most important of all: its data. One of the best ways to do this is by implementing a solid backup solution. But what’s the best way to approach data backup? After all, every business is going to have different needs. We’re here to tell you all about these different needs, and how your organization can implement a reliable backup solution based on yours.

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4 Strategies to Improving Your Backups

How does your business leverage data backup? Depending on the way your business functions and your specific needs, your data backup solution will vary from other organizations in your industry. Yet, one thing is absolutely certain, and it’s that your organization can’t afford to not implement some type of data backup system. In the event of a data loss scenario, you won’t want to be left wondering if you could have prevented it with a little proactive action.

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How to Best Utilize a Physical Backup

How does your business handle its on-premise, physical data backups? This is a question that you don’t necessarily have to ask yourself under pressure of a looming data loss incident. Despite the cloud being the clear victor in terms of restoration and reliability, physical data backup is still an important part of the business continuity process. In the worst-case scenario, a physical backup can be helpful for getting back on track.

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How to Compose a Successful Business Continuity Plan

If you don’t consider the worst-case scenario when preparing your business’ disaster recovery strategy, you’ll inevitably suffer from it when it does happen. Taking into account all of these nuances is one of the main ways your organization can prepare for such an occasion. All of these instances need to be considered when putting together your organization’s business continuity plan. We’ll discuss some of the major parts of it, and why they are crucial.

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Tips on Business Continuity Planning from Financial Institutions

Few organizations take business continuity planning as serious as financial organizations do. The Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as well as the organizations they oversee, depend heavily on technology for their daily operations. For these establishments, a severe data loss event or significant downtime has the potential to cripple the economy, depending on the severity. As such, they require all of the institutions that they have jurisdiction over to meet certain business continuity benchmarks.

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Data Backup isn’t as Simple as You May Think

The protection of your business includes many facets. Physical security, training, and network security get most of the attention (and rightfully so), but does your business have a plan in place if those strategies fail? For the growing business, understanding that your data is an asset doesn’t have to come after you lose some. If your management team prides itself on taking proactive measures to keep business running smoothly, one element that has to be on the table is the practice of data backup and recovery.

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Backup and Recovery Move to the Cloud to Protect Businesses

The cloud has been a major game-changer for business technology, but perhaps its most important contribution has been to the backup and disaster recovery process. Businesses no longer have to suffer due to unforeseen circumstances such as hardware failure or hacking attacks. Instead, a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solution, also known as BDR, can provide a considerable failsafe for your organization.

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Data Recovery Considerations: the Other Side of Your Backup Plan

If we asked you how your organization backs up its data, would you be able to smile and tell us all about it in detail? While it’s important to be optimistic about the future of your organization, you should never believe that you are impervious to data loss. We’ll discuss some of the most important terminology behind data backup and recovery, as well as the best way to protect your organization from the crippling situations presented by data loss.

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Is Your Backup and Recovery Strategy Solid?

Does your business know how it takes data backups and restores data following a disaster? It’s one of the most important parts of managing a business, especially in a world where hackers and mistakes can happen in a moment’s notice. Do you know how to ensure that your business is as secure as possible in the event of a disaster? A good place to start is understanding the various terminology associated with data backup and disaster recovery.

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Redundancy: a Benefit When Dealing in Data

Data is the backbone of any modern business. Since your organization relies so much on it, you need to have measures put into place to ensure that your business can access it in some way, shape or form at all times. This is easier said than done, especially for a business on a budget. We’ll walk you through how you can implement a comprehensive data backup solution to protect your organization.

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What You Need to Know About Data Recovery

Data backup is one of the most critical parts of protecting your business, but there are a lot of moving parts that need to be considered before implementing a solution. For example, did you know that data backup and disaster recovery are two different things completely? While they may both be involved in the business continuity process, the two represent equally important, yet disparate, parts.

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Understanding RPO and RTO

Data backup. Nobody wants to think about it until it’s too late to do anything about it. While no business ever hopes that they will be struck by a data loss incident, no business will ever regret implementing a backup on the off-chance that they ever suffer from a worst-case scenario. What are some of the most important parts of a data backup and business continuity system? We’ll start with Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective.

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