Backups and Disaster Recovery: What Every Business Should Have
How to protect your data and recover from failures, mistakes, and attacks, explained without technical jargon.
Data loss can happen through hardware failure, software bugs, human error, or cyberattacks. The question is not whether something will go wrong, but whether you can recover quickly when it does.
Backups are not enough on their own
A backup is only useful if it can be restored. Many organisations discover their backups are incomplete or unusable at the worst possible moment. Regular restore tests are essential.
Key questions to answer
- How much data could you afford to lose? This guides how often to back up.
- How long could you afford to be offline? This guides how quickly you must recover.
Good backup practices
- Automatic, scheduled backups of databases and files
- Copies stored in a separate location or account
- Encryption of backup data
- Retention policies that keep multiple versions
- Protection against accidental or malicious deletion
Test restores regularly
Schedule restore tests to confirm backups work and to measure how long recovery takes. Document the steps so anyone on the team can follow them.
Plan for different scenarios
- A single record deleted by mistake
- A failed deployment that corrupts data
- An entire service or region becoming unavailable
- A ransomware or security incident
Each needs a different response.
Write a simple recovery plan
List who is responsible, where backups live, how to restore, and how to communicate with customers during an incident.
A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan.
MOKRIN sets up automated, encrypted backups with tested restore procedures for the systems we build and maintain.
