Core business decisions are data-driven. As the basic building block for customer service, growth, marketing, budget projections, and performance, data must be carefully protected to ensure integrity and availability. Any outage can impact data accessibility, but the key to getting back to normal business operations is the time is takes to recover data functionality. That is why data backup alone is not enough. Businesses need Data Backup and Recovery services to secure and restore critical data.

Business is digital. To survive, compete, and thrive in today’s tech-savvy world—companies must capitalize on harvesting and analyzing data from customers, vendors, and prospects. As those data volumes grow and storage becomes increasingly complex, maintaining and securing that data puts tremendous pressure on organizations to streamline their data backup and recovery capabilities.

Data integrity is critical to business outcomes. Cyberattacks, ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks can completely derail growth projections and destroy your customer base. If you are slow to recover from a cyber incident, there will be a rapid drop in consumer confidence, and it will negatively impact your brand.

The long-term viability of your organization depends on your ability to maintain business operations despite digital disruptions and recover quickly from an attack. Marinating a robust data backup and recovery program must be part of your business strategy.

Successfully managing data is essential to overall business functionality. The problem is that many companies don’t consider data backup and recovery solutions to be business-critical--until they face the fallout after an attack. Without data, your business can’t do business. And customers don’t appreciate their sensitive data exposed by the highest bidder on the black market.

Even if your company is not cloud-native, some cloud adoption is necessary to manage, analyze, and store data volumes. Unstructured data is a business problem for 92% of organizations, and the risk of losing the data you use is very high.

Cybercrime costs rose to $20 billion in 2021 alone – and what have you done to protect your digital assets?

Consider data as a commodity that increases in value the more sensitive the information. As data grows at a daily rate of 2.5 quintillion bytes, the risk of data breaches also increases. Security threats loom large and should embolden IT teams to ask for more support to protect and automate the process to manage and protect data.

Highly sensitive data such as intellectual property and personally identifiable information require sophisticated management practices. In addition to utilizing cost-effective cloud storage solutions, it is critical to create processes and train staff on proper data management techniques.

While working on digital transformation initiatives, focus on creating a robust data backup and recovery strategy to protect digital assets against cybercrime. Without the processes and technology in place to recover lost or stolen data, your organization will suffer business impacting downtime and loss of revenue.

A lot of work goes into a successful digital transformation. DX requires a purposeful and complete cultural shift, aided by technology, strategic processes, and buy-in from all levels of the organization. DX is not simply incorporating new technologies into tired processes, as many organizations think. It is about automating manual workflows, orchestrating communication between systems, and aligning modernization efforts with strategic business goals.

So why do 70% of digital transformation efforts fail to provide promised efficiencies and meet organizational goals?

Here are some of the common obstacles faced by organizations when attempting digital transformation:

1. 1. 1. Missing company-wide strategic commitment to digitization
      2. IT resources with cloud skillsets are scarce
      3. Impractical budgets and timelines
      4. Data storage and distribution processes are immature
      5. Applying new technology to broken processes
      6. Change management is nonexistent
      7. Migrating legacy applications fail
      8. No accountability for change adoption
      9. Lack of automation
      10. No clear communication of change
      11. High user expectations
      12. Lack of metrics to gauge success

Before launching into purchasing additional technology and cloud capabilities, gather key stakeholders from across the organization to discuss the journey, cybersecurity preparedness, goals, metrics, and expected budget.

Many companies attempt to undergo data protection strategies utilizing only their internal resources. Although this may seem to be a more cost-effective approach, the lack of in-house data backup expertise can hinder the deployment of complete data protection and recovery strategies. And if your IT teams are not regularly testing backups to ensure restorability, there is no actual security for sensitive data.

As data volume grows, so does the expense of storing data. The best way to implement data backup and recovery solutions is to balance your need with your budget. Choosing the right Managed Service Provider (MSP) to help structure storage infrastructure around data sensitivity will help control costs.

Enhanced data management and security can be implemented for both on-premise and cloud-based storage solutions. To maximize the value of the spend, organizations must develop a strategy around data storage, access, and recoverability timeframes.

The growing demand for IT teams to maintain failover systems to secure data in the case of a natural disaster or ransomware attack is time-consuming and tedious--and, if done incorrectly, can lead to dangerous and expensive consequences. Storing massive amounts of data on-site can overwhelm resources. As on-premise equipment reaches maximum capacity, moving to a cloud or hybrid cloud storage model can substantially reduce capital expenditures.

While you may have a data backup plan in place, if you don’t have a process to perform regular testing to assess the recoverability and viability of data, backups can become fragmented, corrupted, and contain errors that are perpetually copied. To establish the validity of stored data, conduct regularly scheduled assessments.

Many companies are happy with low-cost ‘set it and forget it’ data backup storage solutions – but fail to factor in costs of data restoration, operational downtime, and data loss. The result is that the less expensive option costs far more than the comprehensive data backup and recovery solution offered by an MSP.

Preparedness is key to survival. A proactive data management program that controls risk must be integrated across the organization to protect and prepare against threats. Progress toward digital transformation should be consistent and goal-oriented to safeguard critical business operations.

No organization is immune to a data breach, and no enterprise can afford to be complacent regarding cyber risk. Employee negligence can do as much damage as external cybercriminals. Considering that 95% of data breaches are linked to human error, it is essential to understand how a robust data backup and recovery program is needed to protect against insider threats.

Cyberattacks are on the rise:

          - Remote work is responsible for a 148% increase in cyberattacks
          - 51% of SMBs lack a comprehensive incident response plan
          - Facebook lost $100,000 million in revenue during a six hour unplanned outage
          - 80% of victims who paid ransoms were attacked again
          - 46% of ransomware victims found that returned data was corrupted

But if you have a robust data protection and recovery plan in place-- complete with tested backups--you can survive an attack and minimize downtime. 96% of businesses with strategic data recovery plans have recovered from a disaster.

The value of a solid data backup and recovery program is immeasurable. As the likelihood of threat actors attacking your systems increases, the need for investing in backup and recovery infrastructure also rises, especially in high-profile industries like financial, healthcare, utilities, and manufacturing. Data backup and recovery capabilities are also essential components of a solid business continuity plan.

Rest assured—there are scalable solutions, even for high-risk entities, with end-to-end data backup management.

If you don’t have the dedicated people, processes, and technology in-house and available to deploy, manage, monitor, and maintain onsite, offsite, and immutable backups, you may need an MSP to help you become whole again should disaster strike. At TBC, we offer a Microsoft 365 Backup solution fueled by certified engineers and architects who love to work on backups. Our team has firsthand experience of the value of data backup and restoration for clients across all industries.

Maintaining a proactive and structured approach to data backup and recovery will improve performance and protect companies after a disaster. But many in-house teams are too busy to focus on the arduous tasks of data management and testing data backups.

As of May, 2021, there were 465,000 unfilled IT positions available in the United States. And that number is expected to grow. The demand for qualified IT positions has outpaced the number of available candidates and has slowed digital transformation progress.

CHALLENGES TO HIRING A TEAM IN-HOUSE

A massive shortage of IT professionals means that companies will continually struggle to keep skilled candidates in-house. The high demand for experienced IT professionals in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, robotics, and software development makes it difficult for SMBs to compete for talent.

Often, maintaining a comprehensive in-house IT is too expensive for SMBs. Along with having the right skillset—IT professionals must focus on operational functionality, often leaving data backup tasks on autopilot – endangering data viability. Repetitive tasks and firefighting drills result in a higher human error rate due to boredom and fatigue. That is why engaging an MSP to share resources and costs makes the most business sense.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IS RAPIDLY EXPANDING

The rapid adoption of digital technologies has left 33% of employees without the skills necessary to perform all the duties of their technical job. Companies trying to build and sustain IT teams must train and retain IT talent to support digital acceleration and the explosion of data. Without a commitment to their employees, enterprise organizations will struggle to keep pace with advanced technology.

Data is the most valuable business asset you possess, no matter your industry. Lost or stolen data means downtime, interruptions in productivity, decreased revenues, and the loss of consumer trust. As data breaches and cyberattacks become more targeted and more sophisticated, there is a great need for more robust data security and backup and recovery programs to keep your business in business.

Successful digital transformations include a clear data backup and recovery solution to safeguard your business, but onboarding, training, and retaining capable IT teams can challenge many organizations. The most cost-efficient solution to data management is to deploy third-party resources to leverage their resources for more strategic projects.

Check out our recent blog where one of our data backup experts talks about the Top 5 Things Your Data Backup Strategy Needs.

At TBConsulting, we address your IT needs by working alongside your IT leadership and professional teams. TBC’s data management solutions execute data backup and recovery quickly and securely, helping your organization keep pace with innovations while providing comprehensive data protection strategies.

Partner with TBConsulting to support your IT needs and free up valuable company resources to focus on strategic problem-solving. We simplify complex tasks so your business can allocate time and resources to building business outcomes.

TBConsulting has the resources and technical expertise necessary to handle complex corporate IT infrastructures. We have streamlined our processes, people, and technology to deliver specialized IT support to corporations. Our 24/7/365 response teams are highly qualified professionals capable of handling IT operations all day, every day. Our strategic partnerships with data centers and cloud providers help to ensure we have the best and most cost-effective solutions available for your business needs. TBC can help you scale and secure your data using our cloud-based platforms as your company grows.

TBConsulting can help build a data protection strategy for your business. Contact TBC today to schedule a free, 30-minute consultation to discuss your data backup and recovery strategy.