Data Backup Digest

How certain are you that your enterprise backup plan is successfully capturing all of the business data being created? While you might be automatically backing up everything created on the desktop machines, how much of that data is being taken home at the end of the day or being created at home? If people are using their own devices to work from – sometimes their personal ones – are these being captured in a backup plan? The answer is probably no.

Depending on the size of your business, it’s going to be hard to ensure that you are capturing every single bit of data. Employees might not even be aware of the importance of data backup, oblivious that those business documents they’re creating on their laptops or tablets aren’t being backed up with the rest of their files.

Kroll Ontrack recently undertook some research and found that over a period of a year, one in four employees lost data due to malfunction or corruption of the tech that they were using. This was a 6 percent rise from what had come before, which suggests that there’s been an increase in the risks of data loss.

The research found that while 68 percent of work data lost from these devices were recovered, that leaves almost a third of all work related data lost. When it comes to important business data, that’s just not an acceptable thing to happen – market research, financial data or customer information could be in there, all of which is irrecoverable. That’s not only wasted time, but that’s wasted money.

On top of this, the research found that 33 percent of UK employees used personal devices or cloud services to store their work data, with only one in five users managing to recover data from their home desktops, laptops and tablets, with an even more reduced figure for mobiles.

The portable nature of technology means that employees are now more likely to take their data home with them or on the road. And they’ll use cloud services to keep things in sync, not aware that their business-sensitive data is potentially at risk on these services. The lines are blurred and organisations need to keep track of everything if they want to protect their data.

For starters, a full audit has to be carried out to determine what devices contain work-related data. Training needs to be given to ensure responsible usage and businesses need to find a way to integrate them into their backup plans, making sure to backup only the work data and ignore anything personal. This is why some companies will issue work-only phones and tablets that can be fully integrated into a backup.

No business is ever going to be completely safe from data loss, but steps can be taken to minimise the risk. Make sure your employees are educated on the value of data and the security risks of using personal devices – and that they integrate said devices into the day to day backup plan outlined by the business.