Backups made simple: what to copy, how often and where to keep it

A backup is a copy of your important data stored somewhere separate, so you can get everything back after a failure. Hardware breaks, employees delete the wrong folder, a laptop is stolen, and ransomware locks every file until you pay. Without a backup any one of these can stop your business for days or weeks. With a backup it is an annoying morning.

Backup is not the same as archive

A backup is a copy of your current working data, made so you can restore it quickly. An archive is old data that you no longer use every day, moved away to free up space and kept for the long term. You need both, but only a backup protects you from a disaster.

What can go wrong

• A hard disk or server fails without warning.
• Someone deletes or overwrites important files by mistake.
• Ransomware encrypts everything and demands money.
• A website update or migration goes wrong.
• Fire, flood or theft at the office.

The 3-2-1 rule

The simplest rule that really works:

• 3 copies of your data (the original plus two backups),
• 2 different types of storage (for example a server disk and cloud storage),
• 1 copy kept off-site, away from your office or main server.

Today it is also wise to keep one copy that cannot be changed or deleted for a set time (an "immutable" or offline copy). That way, even if ransomware reaches your network, it cannot destroy the last good copy.

Two things to decide

• How much work can you afford to lose? If you can lose at most one day of work, back up daily. If an hour is too much, back up hourly. This is called the recovery point.
• How fast must you be running again? If your web shop must be back within an hour, you need a setup that restores quickly. A hard disk in a drawer will not do.

What to back up

• Website files and databases.
• Customer data, the CRM, invoices and accounting files.
• Company email and shared documents.
• Settings of servers and applications, and your password manager.
• Important laptops of key employees.

Types of backup

• Full: everything, every time. Simple, but slow and large.
• Incremental: only what changed since the last backup. Fast and small, but restoring needs the whole chain.
• Differential: everything that changed since the last full backup. A balance between the two.

A common setup is one full backup per week with incremental backups every night. Keep several versions, not only the latest, because a problem may not be noticed for days.

How often?

• A shop with daily orders: databases every hour, files every night.
• A company website that changes rarely: weekly, and after every update.
• Documents and email: daily, usually by the cloud provider plus your own copy.

Five steps to a backup that works

1. List what must never be lost.
2. Choose where copies go, following the 3-2-1 rule.
3. Automate it. A backup that depends on someone remembering will be forgotten.
4. Protect the copies with encryption and separate access rights, so an attacker with your daily login cannot delete them.
5. Test a restore at least every quarter. A backup you have never restored is only a hope.

A real-life lesson. A small company ran backups for two years and felt safe. When the server failed they discovered the backup job had silently stopped eight months earlier. Add an alert that tells you when a backup fails or is older than expected, and the same mistake cannot happen to you.