As we’ve covered earlier on the Complete I.T. blog, your business has a legal responsibility under the Data Protection Act (1998) to protect customer data from loss, theft or accidental exposure. Failure to uphold these standards could result in large fines of £500,000 for every incident. The government is also implementing an update to this legislation, further increasing your responsibility for protecting data and increasing the penalties for breaches – up to 2% of annual global turnover.
One of the keys to proper data protection is your backup provision. Even if your existing data protection provisions are considered adequate, you need to know:
- Has it been tested to verify compliance?
- Will it cope with the inevitable growth of your company data?
- Will it still be adequate for future company size growth/ future new systems?
In order to be sure you have a system in place which will future-proof your company for full data-protection compliance, you should consider options for a new system of data protection and storage.
Where a hardware-based back-up system fails
Many business data backups are made using magnetic tapes or removable hard drives. In most cases, the backup and restoration process works perfectly. But for maximum protection against localised disasters – for example, a burglary, or the office catching fire – there needs to be offsite protection as well.
Some companies rely on their IT Manager taking a back-up device off-site with them when out of the office, but this method has several serious potential problems:
- The person responsible for taking the device off-site may forget.
- The device could be damaged or stolen in transit.
- As the volume of data increases, so too do the number of devices that need to be carried.
Clearly, all these situations carry massive data exposure risks, and a better, safer and more automated system would be preferable.
Cloud data protection provides seamless, secure back-up
Instead your business could use the power of the Cloud to provide the necessary storage capacity and security, whilst reducing the tasks required of your IT team at the same time.
Here at Complete I.T. we recommend Datto backup devices to our clients. Not only do they provide complete backup protection for your whole network, but they also replicate your data to the Cloud automatically. The process is seamless and secure, ensuring you always have a copy of your data available, and increasing the overall standard of security of backups. Best of all, the system is almost completely automated – the reliable set-and-forget technology keeps you compliant with minimal effort.
Give our team at Complete I.T. a call or an email today and we can arrange a free demo, so you can see how the power, reliability and compliance of Datto could benefit your business.