Backups and disaster recovery, simply

Your accounts are in Tally on one office PC. Or your school or clinic software runs on a small server in the back room, with shared files in a folder on the same machine. If that machine died tonight, or a virus locked every file, how many days of work would you lose? Most small offices find out only on the day.

Signs you are at risk

• All your data sits on one machine, with no second copy anywhere.
• The backup is a pen drive or external disk that stays plugged into the same PC.
• Nobody has ever restored a backup to check that it opens.
• Only one person knows where the backup is or how to take it.
• Staff open email attachments and links on the PC that holds the accounts.

The last point matters because of ransomware: a virus that locks your files and asks for money to unlock them. It often tries to delete any backup it can reach. CERT-In, India's national cyber security agency, advises keeping offline backups and practising restores regularly.

The 3-2-1 idea, in plain words

• 3 copies of your data: the working copy and two backups.
• 2 different kinds of storage, for example the PC's own disk and an external disk, so one fault does not hit both.
• 1 copy away from the office, on cloud storage or a disk kept elsewhere, so a fire, flood or theft does not take everything.

For ransomware, add one habit: keep at least one copy disconnected, so an infected PC cannot touch it. If the off-site copy goes to the cloud, ask which country it sits in, since student, patient and customer records are personal data. More on keeping your data in India.

What to back up, and how often

• Tally company data, using Tally's own backup and restore option rather than copying folders by hand.
• The database of your school, clinic or billing software. Ask the vendor where it is stored.
• Shared files: letters, scanned documents, spreadsheets, photos.
• Licence keys and installers, so a new PC can be set up quickly.

How often depends on how much work you can redo. For a busy accounts desk or clinic, that usually means an automatic backup every day at closing time. Keep older copies too, say the last few weeks, because a mistake or an infection may go unnoticed for days.

Test the restore, and ask your vendor

A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. Every month or quarter, restore the latest backup on a different PC, open it, and check that last week's entries are there. Note how long it took. That is roughly how long your office will be stopped on a bad day. Then ask your IT vendor:

• How many backup copies do we have, and where is each one?
• Is one copy offline, out of reach of ransomware on our PCs?
• When did you last restore one of our backups, and how long did it take?
• If the server died today, how much data would we lose, and when would we be working again?
• Who gets told when a backup fails?

How we can help

We can review how your office backs up today and give you a short written list of gaps. For the apps and systems we build and run for you, daily backups kept in an AWS India region and regular restore tests are part of the job. See our services, or talk to us when it suits you.