All your data is gone!
April Fools!
Don’t worry. Your data was never really gone. Sorry, we pulled that prank a day early for April 1st, but the best jokes are the ones you aren’t expecting.
But what if it wasn’t a prank? What would happen to your business if all your data suddenly became completely corrupted, irretrievable, or accidentally deleted forever?
We’ll give you a second to calm down from the horror of imagining that.
It’s why March 31st is a special holiday for companies that rely on data to keep their business operations secure (i.e., all of them). It’s World Backup Day.
World Backup Day is an independent initiative that aims to inform individuals and businesses about the importance of regular data backup, especially in the face of natural disasters, data center emergencies and cybersecurity threats.
Why data backup is critical for your business
It’s not overstating things to say that data is the lifeblood of any modern company. Without secure, easily accessible and managed data, companies simply can’t handle most of their basic operations, keep customers satisfied, or enable any growth or security.
Many companies don’t have the appropriate data backup infrastructure, solutions, or strategies to establish a consistent data backup approach. Here are some alarming facts:
- 40% of SMBs that manage their networks will be hacked and more than 50% won’t even know they were attacked.1
- 43% of SMBs lack any cybersecurity defense plans.2
- The average “breach lifecycle” of an attack against an enterprise network takes 280 days and the effects can linger for years.3
- 1 in 5 SMBs doesn’t employ any endpoint security protections.4
- 71% of enterprises are alarmed that remote workers are putting the organization at risk for a data breach.5
- 57% of enterprises believe they are prime targets for those wishing to exploit vulnerabilities.5
What trends should inform your data backup strategy
Data backup requirements must be continuously reassessed each year to adapt to new trends and technology advancements. Here are just a few that you should be aware of in 2021:
- The rise of ransomware – Cybercriminals are employing increasingly sophisticated virtual attacks that can strip whole corporations of their database networks at an immense cost.
- The cloud is slowly replacing the traditional data center – Many companies are transitioning 100% of their data management to the cloud, while others are handling their backup operations via the cloud. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of enterprises will have shut down their traditional data centers.1
- Data protection budgets – Companies realize that managing data backup can be a full-time job or even require a team effort depending on the network size. Budget concerns can be one reason why companies don’t invest in proper data backup solutions.
How you can celebrate World Backup Day
Ready to join in the global festivities of World Backup Day? There are multiple ways to get involved.
- Take the World Backup Day pledge: “I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.” (I will also tell my friends and family about World Backup Day – friends don’t let friends go without a backup.)
- Share on your social media with hashtag #WorldBackupDay. (Link to this post, if it helps.) Are we forgetting something? Oh, right.
- Backup your data! That is kind of the whole point of all this. On top of that, we’re going to add in an extra step that most people forget:
- Test your backups.
What good is a data backup solution if you don’t know whether it works or not? Finding out that your backup is corrupt or won’t completely restore once you’ve already lost your data is the worst kind of hindsight. You should be aware that:
- 34% of businesses with a backup solution never test it.4
- 60% of data backups are incomplete and 50% of restores are unsuccessful.6
How will you celebrate World Backup Day?
- Gartner, “The Data Center Is (Almost) Dead” 2019
- BullGuard, Research Study, 2021
- IBM Security, “Cost of a Data Security Breach,” 2020
- Hosting Tribunal, “Mind-Boggling Backup Statistics for Safe & Sound 2021,” 2021
- Ponemon Institute, “Cybersecurity in the Remote Work Era,” 2020
- QuikTeks, “Most Important Data Backup Stats,” 2020
