Why is data backup essential for organisations that are implementing remote working models?
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed organisations to take stock and reconsider the way they do business. Organisations have had to embrace remote or hybrid working at an unprecedented scale and pace to adapt to changing work environments.
A recent Gartner study revealed that 80% of global companies plan to allow employees to continue working remotely on a part-time basis even after the pandemic. It also highlighted that 47% of organisations will allow their staff to work from home full time. Additionally, a similar industry report by PwC showed that a significant number of CEOs plan to make their companies more digital and virtual, with 78% saying that remote collaboration is here to stay for the long term.
In today’s ‘new normal’, more and more data is being created and used outside the corporate perimeter – at the edge, in third-party systems, and across multiple cloud environments. However, many organisations do not have the appropriate data backup strategy in place, which puts this critical asset at risk.
What are the most prevalent threats to enterprise data?
Cyber-attacks including ransomware and data theft are among the biggest threats to data. A 2020 study by the Ponemon Institute and IBM Security, revealed that the average cost of a data breach per company in the Middle East is $6.53 million. However, oftentimes data loss can also be caused by accidental error, physical failure to computers and natural disasters such as floods and fires.
Data loss can have an adverse impact on any organisation. When businesses lose data, it can take hours or even days to recover it. It can also result in devastating financial and reputational losses, and disrupt the productivity of remote teams.
These challenges are further exacerbated by the proliferation of remote or hybrid work environments, which pose a higher risk for enterprise data. Remote employees’ endpoints are often unsecure and the increased usage of the cloud presents a huge blind spot in an organisation’s data protection and backup strategy.
What key steps should companies consider to ensure the success of their data backup strategy?
Embracing remote working models doesn’t have to mean sacrificing the safety of your data and there’s no better time than the present to implement a reliable backup system.
As organisations continue to navigate the uncertainties of the pandemic and an increasingly growing threat landscape, having one copy of your primary data is not enough. An effective data backup plan complies with the golden backup 3-2-1 rule. This entails creating 3 copies of data across 2 different mediums and having 1 copy off-site for disaster recovery.
It is also vital to have the right data backup solutions provider to ensure the protection of enterprise data. Among the key players in this space is Synology whose innovative solutions help keep data safe and secure across multiple platforms in the company’s IT infrastructure. The company has a robust portfolio of data storage and backup solutions that can enable organisations to reduce the risks of data loss.
What should organisations look for when choosing a data backup solution?
An ideal data backup solution offers centralised management for easy deployment. The best backup solutions offer intuitive backup management for all endpoints, servers, virtual machines, and third-party SaaS services. Effective solutions should offer near-instantaneous restoration to minimize costly service downtime.
They should also look for a solution that maximises storage efficiency with future-proofed technology. Advanced backup solutions provides incremental backups that saves a copy of only changed or newly added files since the last backup. Similarly, global deduplication technology also greatly enhances storage efficiency by only copying data that has been changed, but this is different from incremental backups, as only a single backup is kept, which consists of system and application files that are reduced to unique file blocks. The best backup solutions offer both options while also giving attention to storage device deployment.
Another key factor organisations should keep in mind when looking for data backup solution is cost-effectiveness. Managing business data can be time-consuming and expensive. Upfront costs, ongoing capacity upgrades, routine maintenance, integration with separate vendors, periodic firmware and software updates, repairs, and recurring license fees are just some of the prices to pay. These expenses can pile up quickly and result in an exorbitant total cost of ownership. Having a backup service that integrates hardware and software can mitigate these costs.
Finally, IT leaders should understand that a good backup should always have another backup. Having one copy of your primary data is not enough to protect against the rising threat of cybercriminals and remain compliant with increasingly demanding compliance regulations. An ideal backup plan complies with the golden 3-2-1 rule.
How can Synology help businesses succeed in their data protection and backup strategies?
Synology NAS delivers a total license-free solution that comes with centralised data protection and leverages storage efficiency.
A customer success story that showcases this is Corin Group, an Australian company that’s revolutionising orthopaedics. Corin needed an archiving solution to store cold data that wasn’t cost-prohibitive or had recurring fees. Additionally, they were also looking for alternative software solutions to back up offsite data, particularly their Office 365 deployment. With over 2,400 mailboxes, licensing fees added up quickly and became a heavy financial burden for the company.
Corin opted to deploy Synology solutions for their reliability, cost-effectiveness, future expandability, and ease of use. With Synology, the company was able to enjoy a robust storage server that enabled them to securely backup their entire Office 365 deployment without additional licensing fees. Additionally, with Synology, Corin was able to save AU$ 84,000 annually compared to their previous solution.
Another example is Polish lender, Idea Bank, a company that faced challenges around legal requirements on keeping backups of all operations, including emails and Microsoft SharePoint data. With data scattered in different sources, performing backup and recovery tasks took a lot of time and effort.
Business continuity was also at risk as a result of hardware failures and hard drive corruption, resulting in costly data loss and downtime for repairs.
Idea Bank needed a backup solution with better restoration options that minimized these risks and maximised service availability.
After investing in four Synology NAS, the bank leveraged Synology’s Active Backup for Business software to back up their physical and virtual Windows deployments on two 12-bay rackmount SAS units.
The remaining two 12-bay Synology RackStation units were used to back up a total of 2,506 Microsoft 365 accounts and 1,239 Microsoft SharePoint sites with Active Backup for Microsoft 365. New users were also automatically detected and backed up, reducing the time spent on manual configurations.
The bare-metal and SaaS backups proved to be exactly the time-saving solution that Idea Bank needed, as their applications could be restored to their original configurations and computers were ready to use immediately after restoration.
“Synology Active Backup for Microsoft 365 has let us streamline our operations. It has dramatically boosted the efficiency of our admins backing up e-mail, SharePoint, and other data and improved employee productivity,” said Przemysław Grzegorczyk, Microsoft Systems Administrator at Idea Bank S.A.
Not forgetting to complete the 3-2-1 backup rule, the bank regularly backed up the data on two of the Synology NAS devices to one another with Snapshot Replication, adding a layer of redundancy in the event that the primary backup destination is unavailable.
WEBINAR ALERT
To help organisations navigate the data backup challenges of the new normal, Synology is hosting a webinar on 6th October 2021 at 1:00PM (GST), which will delve into backup best practices.
The virtual event will explore real-world cases and showcase how businesses with different IT infrastructures can protect their data with a complete backup and recovery strategy. Key highlights of Synology’s upcoming webinar include:
- Leading features and comprehensive backup & recovery solution to protect your company’s physical and virtual machines, Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace accounts
- Proven best practices and scenarios of data protection, and the capabilities to prevent data loss from a disaster
- How to complete a well-structured backup strategy with Synology’s license-free, integrated backup, and recovery solutions
Data backup is essential to securing today’s remote workforces. It is a key element to ensuring peace of mind for companies, their employees and their customers.
To find out more about how Synology can enable effective data backup strategies, click here!
