User data backup Best Practice

Backing up and protecting User Data: IT User Data Backup Best Practice

If there’s one thing all IT Manager’s know, it’s that you can’t leave vital IT functions in the hands of users. As business data protection is imperative for business continuity, expecting that users will follow a policy and backup to a central server or external hard-drive is putting your business data at risk. User data backup needs to be centrally controlled by IT, using a solution that makes it simple and effectively and securely protects business data.

Identifying (and dealing with) the two main culprits behind user data backup challenges

• At the end of this article we will offer a free User Data Backup Software 10 user license to you – but, first, we’d like to answer this one simple question – WHY IS USER DATA BACKUP SUCH A PAIN?

Most businesses, enterprises and organizations still experience a large variety of issues with user data backups as they have not put a centrally managed user data backup software solution in place.

The main issue, of course, is that backups are not reliable, making data recovery a tedious task (if possible at all) and this leads to a whole host of problems that your company, your IT department and your users can do without.

We can attribute the pain of user data backup to two MAIN culprits.

Main culprit ONE: It’s YOUR problem!

A (not so) surprising statistic from the Cibecs 2011 Data Loss Survey of over 250 companies) was that most companies relied on a data backup policy that placed the onus for the protection of business critical information on their users.

An equally unsurprising statistic was that “users not following company data backup policy” came out a triumphant #1 in the “problems associated with user data backup” stakes. In fact, “users not following policy” scored twice as many votes as any other option.

Well… “obviously”. Of course you cannot trust users to backup their data.

They never have, they never will and there are three, basic, reasons for it:

• They forget, don’t know how to, and do not care to find out
• It takes a lot of time and they do not want to be bothered
• They do not want sensitive information on a server where it can potentially be open to unauthorized access.

That’s the long and short of it.

Users should never be in charge of the security of business critical information. Not only does this leave your company open to data loss and all the (direct and indirect) costs associated with it but, in terms of corporate governance and compliance, it also leaves your business badly exposed.

For more information, read our post on

Business Data Backup

Main culprit TWO: Antiquated / Legacy solutions

IT tends to look at user data protection in the traditional sense, meaning from the center out, instead of from the edge, inward – with the main areas of risk and exposure residing on endpoint user devices such as laptops and desktops.   

Problems with this mindset?

Corporate data loss grows exponentially each year, which means that data at the edge of the network has never been more exposed. Loss is happening at a higher rate with data intake doubling every 18 months.

The fact of the matter is that today’s legacy solutions struggle to provide an answer to the problem of endpoint data protection because vendors attempt to adapt antiquated technology, instead of building the correct solution from the ground up.

5 characteristics of an effective user data backup and recovery solution.

• The solution is non-intrusive and  invisible to users
• The solution optimizes storage and bandwidth use
• The solution is effective for remote data/branch office use
• The solution delivers quick and easy data recovery
• The solution offers central control and clear, concise, management reporting

Leave no byte behind!

Our goal for the year is to assist businesses and organizations to achieve a 0% data loss statistic.

In order to kick things off we have extended our offer of a free 10 user data backup licenses that companies can register for and use without any obligation or limited trial period.

The license is a full feature version of our latest automated data backup and recovery software.

For 10 users, at least, the backup pain will be a thing of the past.

For an overview of our data backup and recovery software – watch our quick YouTube video!