Digital assets and information are imperative to modern enterprise. Therefore, data protection is essential for ensuring business continuity and operational efficiency. The last thing any business owner wants is for their data to be compromised to the point it is rendered obsolete – this can have a disastrous impact on your business finances and reputation!
Backup and disaster recovery exist to ensure business continuity – your business’s ability to continue functioning as normal in the event of an emergency. It is an unfortunate downside that with an increase in information comes increased risk of emergency, so you want to ensure that your business is safeguarded from cyberattacks, hardware malfunction, human error and more.
Here, we will explain both methods and why the best backup and disaster recovery Perth has can save your business from a truly miserable situation:
What is backup?
This solution is a systematic method of creating data copies to protect it from loss. It entails creating routine data copies and transferring them to a third-party storage space. This is done to ensure that the data can be restored in the event of an emergency. You can easily automate and schedule processes to ensure that your business is protected in the event of an emergency.
This solution typically includes:
- Data duplication: You can create multiple data copies to preserve it in its current form;
- Granularity: You can create granular copies that allow for easy recovery of specific data points or files;
- Scheduling: You can enjoy routine automations that can be as frequent as your business needs;
- Storage: You can store data copies both on-site (your office) and offsite (a third-party, cloud location) to ensure that they are protected in the event of a workplace emergency like human error.
What is disaster recovery?
Disaster recovery (DR), conversely, transcends data duplication and instead focuses on post-disaster IT infrastructure restoration. DR entails a wide set of actions and methodologies designed to rescue downtime and ensure that your business can bounce back to the highest efficiency.
DR typically includes:
- Business continuity: DR aims to ensure that you can operate effectively in the event of an emergency;
- Infrastructure restoration: This includes designing and administering procedures and protocols to ensure networks, servers and other systems are restored;
- Testing & verification: DR is regularly tested to ensure that it will perform its function in the event of an emergency;
- Prioritisation: This involves prioritising the processes and systems that are most imperative to your business’s operation.
- Coordination & communication: DR stipulates how your enterprise will internally communicate in the event of an emergency.
What are the major differences?
There are clear difference between the breadth of these solutions, including:
- Scope: Whilst backup focuses on duplicating your data, DR is designed to maintain business operations in an emergency whilst restoring critical infrastructure.
- Objectives: The ultimate goal of backup is to protect your data whilst DR is a comprehensive approach to ensuring your business can operate in an emergency.
- Restoration time: DR is intended to ensure long-term restoration whilst their counterpart is designed to quickly restore your information;
- Cost: Naturally, a DR solution will likely cost more than their counterpart, as they entail a much broader approach to ensuring business continuity and data protection in the long term.
So, as you can see, there are marked differences between the two solutions when it comes to the scale of what you are trying to achieve. Both are designed to protect your assets, however one is designed for quick restoration whilst DR is designed to protect your operation in the long term.
