Business backup in Lyon

We always ask that question during our work with businesses, and it often makes people uncomfortable. Many owners know a backup runs somewhere. Very few know what it holds, since when it has actually been working, and how long it would take to get the business running again from it.

The three questions that define the need

What do you lose if you lose a day's work? That answer sets the frequency. A practice entering data into business software all day cannot make do with a weekly backup; an activity whose data barely moves can.

How long can you stay at a standstill? That answer sets the arrangement. Restoring files from an external disk takes a few hours; rebuilding a whole server from scratch takes several days if nothing has been prepared.

What is genuinely irreplaceable? Software can be reinstalled, so can systems. What cannot be bought back is your customer data, your accounts, your open files, your correspondence. That is where the effort should go.

What we put in place

• A fast local backup, on dedicated media, to restore a file or a folder quickly - that is the daily need, and by far the most frequent.
• An offline or off-site copy, protecting against what the first one does not cover: ransomware, fire, theft, water damage.
• Several generations kept, rather than one copy overwritten each time. This is essential: corruption or encryption going unnoticed for a few days destroys a backup that overwrites itself.
• Monitoring, with an alert on failure. Without it, a backup that stopped three months ago is only noticed on the day of the incident - the finding we make most often during audits.
• Business software databases, which often need particular handling: simply copying an open file produces an unusable backup.
• A real restore test, carried out in front of you.

The mistakes we come across

The permanently connected external disk. It protects against a disk failure, and against nothing else. Ransomware encrypts it along with the server, a burglar takes it with the computer.

Syncing mistaken for backup. A synced folder faithfully copies your files - and also your deletions and your corruptions. It is an excellent working tool, it is not a safety net, unless version history is switched on and checked.

The backup on the same server, in another folder or on another partition. On the day the machine dies, both disappear together.

The backup that has never been verified, or whose password nobody has known since the person who set it up left.

What it asks of you

Not much, but it matters. Someone has to be named to receive the alerts and know what to do with them. The offline media has to be handled according to the agreed rule - and that rule has to reflect reality: a procedure demanding a daily action will not be followed, whereas a weekly one will.

We would rather have a slightly less ambitious arrangement that is actually followed than a perfect one on paper that is abandoned after a month.

Et la conformité

If you handle customers' personal data, losing it is an incident that may bring obligations, in particular notification within a short deadline. We are not lawyers and do not stand in for them, but we flag what falls under this heading. See also small business IT security and security audit.

The possible arrangements

Depending on size and budget: external media on rotation, a local backup server such as a NAS, off-site online backup, or a combination of all three - the most common and the most solid. See also automatic backup.