Too often we see data loss. It’s painful, especially when it is completely avoidable. Sometimes the data loss is a huge hit to a business, such as financial records, client data, or invoices. Sometimes the data loss is much more personal, such as family photos, videos, and documents. Both are a big hit, and both can be avoided with ease and very little cost!

In the tech industry, we have a rule, which we call the 3-2-1 rule. All data should have 3 copies – 2 backup and 1 production. This reduces your chance of irretrievably losing your data almost to zero!

Your files on your computer are your production copy. This is the “live” data that you work with daily. The type of files you have are irrelevant – everything from a text document to a QuickBooks database should be considered. When your backup setup is properly configured you should only be making changes to the production data.

We then recommend a local backup, such as a NAS device or server. We do not recommend a standalone USB hard-drive for a number of reasons, which we will get into later. Your data should back up in real-time to your local backup.

Your local backup should then be backing up to a remote location. This remote backup should be thoroughly encrypted before transferring, which most remote backup utilities can ensure. Just like with a local backup, remote backups should be done in real-time if your internet service provides you with enough upstream bandwidth.

And that’s it! Once you have your local and remote backup configured you no longer have to worry about losing your data.

What happens if I get attacked with Ransomware?

Ransomware is a nasty trend right now. Ransomware uses encryption to lock all the files on a computer or server. The decryption key is transmitted to the virus author, and they demand a ransom to get the decryption key. This can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands. These ransoms must be paid in Bitcoin (or other crypto-currency), and are completely untraceable.

If your data is being correctly backed up, there is nothing to worry about. If you get infected with ransomware, we simply restore a clean copy of your data, and you’re back in business!

How do I know if my backups are good?

We strongly recommend checking your backup status weekly, or even more often if possible. Almost every backup program has a status section that will let you check when the last backup was taken. With all Apollo Networks Helpdesk Services contracts comes real-time monitoring of backups. If your data isn’t being backed up, our technicians will know about it and handle it! If you’re not an Apollo Networks client, we can help you with your backups – reach out to us and find out how simple and affordable it is!