THE ESSENTIALS. | ISSUE 001
Building your technology foundation? The Essentials. helps you make cost-conscious decisions, put the basics in place, and avoid unnecessary spending.
If your business lost its data tomorrow, could you get it back? Don't assume your cloud provider has everything covered or that someone set up backups when your business started.
Let's look at what needs to be backed up, where those backups should live, and how to make sure they actually work.
Imagine an employee accidentally deletes a folder containing three years of customer information. No problem, you think. Everything is in the cloud.
Then you discover the folder is no longer recoverable.
Having your information in the cloud doesn't automatically mean you have a backup.
Start with your cloud applications.
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and other cloud applications may offer recovery features, but they have limits. Verify what information is protected, how long deleted data can be recovered, and whether you need a separate backup.
Don't forget your accounting software, CRM, and other applications containing important business information.
Check your email.
Some businesses use email provided by their website hosting company. Is that email backed up, or is the provider simply storing it?
What happens if an employee downloads email to their computer and removes it from the server? Depending on how their email is configured, a failed laptop could mean losing those messages permanently.
Make sure you know where your email is stored and how it could be recovered.
Don't overlook computers and servers.
Employees may save important files directly to their laptops or desktops instead of your cloud storage. Those files might not be backed up. Make sure employees know where to save their work, and verify that folders such as Documents and Desktop are actually protected.
The same applies to physical servers in your office and virtual servers hosted elsewhere. Don't assume they're protected. Verify that backups exist.
Know where your backups are stored.
Are they on an external drive, another computer, or in the cloud?
Keep a protected copy separate from your original data. Otherwise, a single incident could damage or destroy both.
Make sure someone is responsible.
A backup system set up three years ago by someone who has since left the company isn't much reassurance.
Someone needs to check that backups are working, investigate failures, and periodically test recovering actual information.
The worst time to discover your backups don't work is when you need them.
You should know where your backups are stored, who can access them, and whom to call when something goes wrong.
You don't need to understand how backup software works. You need to know that your information is protected and that someone can get it back.
Assign someone to complete the backup inventory in The More. and report back with what's protected, what's missing, where backups are stored, and whether a recovery test has succeeded. If you're handling technology yourself, complete it as your starting point.
Ask: What information are we backing up?
Listen for: Coverage of cloud applications, email, employee computers, and physical or virtual servers, not just an assurance that everything is in the cloud.
Ask: Where are our backups, and who can recover them?
Listen for: A known storage location, appropriate access, a designated person, and recovery instructions that won't disappear when someone leaves.
Ask: Who checks our backups, and when did we last test recovering something?
Listen for: A named person, regular checks, a specific successful restore test, and a process for addressing failures.
Optional: Go a little deeper.
Your First Business Backup Inventory
Have whoever handles your technology complete this checklist. You don't need to know how to configure backup software; you need answers you can understand.
Cloud applications: Identify Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, accounting, CRM, and other important applications. Verify recovery limits and whether separate backups are needed.
Email: Confirm where messages are stored, whether they're backed up, and what happens to email downloaded to employee computers.
Employee computers: Check laptops, desktops, and remote computers for important files stored locally. Verify that folders such as Documents and Desktop are included in the backup, or that their contents are saved to an approved, backed-up location. Make sure employees know where to save their work.
Servers: Confirm backups exist for any physical or virtual servers.
Backup frequency: Record how often backups run and how much recent work could be lost.
Storage: Document where backups are kept and whether they're protected separately from the original data.
Access: Record who can access the backups and perform a recovery.
Monitoring: Name the person responsible for checking results and resolving failures.
Testing: Record when information was last successfully restored and schedule the next test.
Keep the completed inventory somewhere accessible to the business owner, not just the person handling IT.
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