Here’s why data protection is critical, no matter the size of your business

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Today, one of the greatest threats to small businesses is a cyberattack. According to the Wall Street Journal, companies with less than $10 million in annual revenue are less likely to be prepared for cyberattacks. Fireeye also reports that while 77% of all cybercrimes are directed toward small businesses, only 42% of small business owners are concerned with cyber security. 

Many small businesses aren’t even aware when they’ve been the victim of a cyberattack. These attacks can lead to hours of lost productivity as well as expensive measures to try and retrieve lost data. For example, encryption-based ransomware encrypts files stored on computers and can spread across the network, preventing businesses from accessing their own data. Once infected, a business can be locked out for hours or even days, and there is no guarantee that the data can be retrieved even after paying a ransom.

Another common challenge for small businesses is scattered and redundant data. With an increase in remote working, business data is spread across multiple platforms and devices. This data fragmentation poses a critical security risk, as it becomes impossible for small businesses to secure so many different endpoints for their users. It complicates data backups and compatibility, and substantially increases costs due to the upkeep of different systems and support. 

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With these issues in mind, your company may need a new approach when considering data protection. Small businesses need a solution that enables them to centralise and protect business data distributed across platforms, and perform multi-version backups with flexible, rapid restoration options to minimise damage when a disaster occurs. Synology offers a number of solutions such as Active Backup Suite that are flexible based on your company size and data needs. You can read more on the various benefits by clicking here.

Whatever the size of your business is, there are three important steps you need to keep in mind for any backup system to truly be effective.

Centralised Management

First, a centralized data management system needs to support comprehensive backup tasks from a single console. IT staff can deploy and monitor backup tasks, and stay alert with instant notifications and detailed reports.

The best backup solutions offer intuitive backup management for all endpoints, including servers, virtual machines, and SaaS applications. Today’s leading solutions offer near-instantaneous restoration to minimize costly service downtime. With an easy-to-use centralized backup solution, individual employees can even be trusted to restore their own data using flexible recovery options without burdening IT admins, thus speeding up the recovery process.

Smart backup technology

A smart data backup solution is one that can backup all company devices without unnecessarily duplicating data. Incremental backup is an important feature to keep in mind, so only files that have been changed or newly added since the last backup are included. The ideal backup solutions offer both full and incremental backups, while also considering existing storage deployments. It is essential that your backup solution is flexible and scalable enough to meet growing business needs within your current IT infrastructure.

Meet your security budget & requirements

Finally, a backup solution should be cost-efficient. According to Foundry’s Security Priorities Study, 90% of security leaders believe they’re falling short in addressing cyber risks, and attribute these shortfalls to not investing enough in security budgets. Business data security can be expensive, with costs including Infrastructure construction, security analytics, network monitoring, routine maintenance, firmware, software updates, and recurring license fees. 

Having a backup service that integrates hardware and software can mitigate these costs. Some storage providers offer built-in backup applications that achieve comprehensive data protection, including backup tasks for physical and virtual environments, and even saving off-site copies to the cloud. By consolidating acquisition, deployment, and technical support with one vendor, IT admins can have a comprehensive backup and recovery plan in place without paying additional license or maintenance fees.

The ownership and management of data is a crucial part of today’s growing businesses, and whether or not a business can protect its data plays a major role in its success. It’s important for businesses of all sizes to treat data security and backup infrastructure with the highest priority, to ensure that regardless of any data threats, their operations are kept safe.

Learn more about data protection in Synology’s Webinar by clicking here

Nick Rego

A former IT & Marketing Manager turned full time Editor, Nick enjoys reviewing PC components, 3D Printers, projectors, and anything shiny and expensive. He can also be found baking up a storm in the kitchen, which we are more than happy to encourage.