If you’ve ever forgotten to backup a critical file only to regret it later, you know just how important data backup is for any organization. A ransomware attack, hard drive failure, natural disaster, or accidental deletion can deprive you of critical information, potentially hobbling your business and exposing you to legal liability over breached or missing data. So here are some smart data backup scheduling tips and strategies for SMBs, courtesy of your Austin IT managed services team at Gravity Systems.

Build a backup plan based on your priorities. You may have piles of data that rarely get consulted alongside other files that see frequent daily modification. Evaluate which files see the most action and schedule them for daily backups, leaving the less-urgent data for weekly, biweekly, or even less frequent attention. Once you have your plan, document it on your shared work calendar or other auto-scheduling software.

Schedule full backups outside heavy work hours. A full backup can tax your computer network, slowing down processes and impairing your employees’ productivity, if you schedule it in the middle of the workday. If possible, run these backups outside of normal business hours or at least during reliable quet spells in the workday.

Follow the 3-2-1 rule. As a general rule, SMBs should always make three full backups at a time – one main backup, and two secondary or “backup” backups. One of the backups should live offsite, such as on a cloud-based server, with the other two each inhabiting a different type of physical media, such as a local hard drive and an archival tape drive. This arrangement ensures that you can access your data in a wide variety of disaster scenarios.

One last data backup tip: Ask Gravity Systems to provide reliable, comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery for your business!