The Risks of Not Backing up Data in the Company

The backup, is an essential task in any environment in which you work with data. Whether in the personal, professional or business field, safeguarding data is a key mission, especially today and with new regulations such as the GDPR.

Contrary to what we might think, there are still companies that do not make backup copies, or that make them incorrectly. This implies a high risk of losing data, and we are not just talking about being stolen, but about disappearing forever.

The backup is a simple concept to understand is the process of copying the original data of an organization or company in a secure location. This location can be physical, local – a hard disk, for example – or it can be a service in the Cloud, something more and more frequent. There are many techniques to perform periodic backup and many other recovery strategies.

What can happen if we do not make periodic backups?

Let’s see what risks we face by not performing the backup process correctly.

• Irreparable loss of data: It is the most obvious risk: if we keep all data in the same location, the risk of such data disappearing is unassuming. This can happen for many reasons, from accidental erasure – human terror -, from malicious action, from a flood or fire … This can mean that we lose our clients or most of them. The impact on the business can be enormous if, suddenly, we no longer have historical information, or contact or billing information. We will lose all the accumulated value and we will have to start from scratch. Economic losses can be severe.
• Loss of reputation and negative impact on the brand image: If we cannot keep the data in our business safe, what guarantees can we offer our customers?
• Legal problems: The data protection regulations are very strict at present and require companies to make backup copies under certain precepts and requirements. If we are unable to comply with these regulations, we are exposed to economic sanctions and, if we get rid of them, we will be subject to more in-depth inspections. Let’s not forget that the regulations express technical obligations that must be met.
• Data unavailability: An easy consequence for anyone to understand, since not having backup copies implies that, if we work remotely, we will have a single point of access to data that, for any reason, may not be available. On the contrary, having backup copies in the Cloud, for example, will allow us to access the most current version of the data from anywhere, without any problem.

Among the many solutions that exist to make backups, one booming is the backup in the Cloud. These strategies are key to data security, but also to the continuity and viability of companies, which can see how their business is going to be ruined in a matter of a few days, in case of suffering an attack, or a disaster like a fire, for example.