All of the discussion these days is around backup. Make sure you’re backing up your data – offsite, in the cloud, to a drive etc. However, something that’s often missed is checking on that backup solution and making sure that a) It’s actually backing  up as it is designed to, and b) That if you needed to restore the data, it would work.

We see this time and time again where business owners thought their server was being backed up nightly, and then they find out that actually it wasn’t. That the backup they thought was running hasn’t run for over 3 months and that the data they thought they had backed up isn’t actually there.

So how do you tackle this? Make sure you have a backup service that is monitored. Almost all professional grade backup solutions allow you to setup reporting so emails can be delivered when a backup completes correctly, or fails for some reason. These emails can go to you internally, or to your IT support who can then investigate the issue if the backup failed.

Test, test, test. Schedule monthly, quarterly, annual tests of your data. What if your server crashed tomorrow and you had to restore all of your accounting data onto a new one? Would the backup work? Schedule a test with your IT support to make sure the backups that are being taken are solid, good copies of the data you’d need in the event of an emergency.

Our Partek Protect solution is fully monitored 24/7 so we’re able to notify our clients on backup issues, and rectify them to ensure the integrity of their backed up data.