Not Changing Your Backup Drive Can Bankrupt Your Business
Not bothering to change your backup drive can easily bankrupt your business. Here's how.
I'll Take That Risk
Having an off-site backup is critical. Will every business use it? No. Not everyone's building burns down, is destroyed by a tornado, or gets infected by ransomware. But if a tragedy happens, then will your business survive losing all its data? What if your business suddenly had no:
- Accounts receivable data
- Invoice history
- Accounting data
- Client/project data
- Employee records
- Payroll records
- Account numbers
- Password records
- Working computers
Typically when a ransomware hacker "detonates" their ransomware they also encrypt backups, to increase pressure on a company.
If accounting and billing grind to a halt, how much cash does your business have on hand to continue operations and pay for recovery? Can it continue at all without any company records? Paying a ransom is often illegal, depending on who the hacker is, regardless of whether you know who they are, and paying is not guaranteed to work.
Quite often hackers will download data before encrypting it, so one can safely assume ransomware is also a data breach. If forensic investigation is warranted, one may need to preserve the existing computers as-is, instead of immediately restoring from backup.
How Much Can You Lose?
If your firm changes the backup drive every 6 months, that's essentially saying losing 6 months of data is acceptable. It's up to each client to evaluate what is right for them. Many of our clients change drives weekly.
One idea is to rotate multiple drives and keep one for longer term storage.
Make A Plan
Hopefully this article serves as a wake-up call, and you'll remember from now on! We suggest swapping drives on the same day every week to establish a habit, or setting a calendar reminder to swap the drive.
If you're concerned about having both backup drives in the same room, consider a third drive and rotate them, so one is always off site. Or back up to a drive that stays at the office, and make a copy to a second drive to take off-site. Of course, even if both backup drives are off site overnight, the original data is still in the office, so that's better than having the original and all backup drives at the office for a workday.
In short, imagine the worst case scenario, and then plan around it. We can help design a solution that's right for you.
December 2022
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