One of the worst things that can happen to any company is data loss. Losing access to important data can lead to anything from downtime to your business shutting down permanently. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to prevent trouble for your organization. These steps include data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
The Difference Between Data Backup, Business Continuity, and Disaster Recovery
You’ve probably heard of data backup, business continuity, and disaster recovery before. But do you know what these words mean? They’re often confused with one another and used interchangeably, but they’re actually three completely separate concepts. You need all three to keep your business from being put in a vulnerable position.
In this blog, we’ll explain what each term means and how they differ from each other.
What Is Data Backup?
Let’s start by talking about data backup. This is the act of copying data from one location and storing that copied data in another. Data backup can be done on a USB drive, external hard drive, an offsite server, or any other storage device.
The purpose of this practice is to protect your data in the event of something like hardware failure, a natural disaster, or a cyberattack. Since the information isn’t stored locally, if your device experiences a data loss event, you still have access to whatever you saved. Think of data backup as a security blanket for your company.
What Is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery is an organization’s process of restoring access and functionality for its IT infrastructure and data after a disaster. This works by replicating data and storing it in an offsite location, so in the event of a disaster, you can rest easy knowing you have duplicate information that’s safe in a separate location.
This may sound similar to data backup, but the basic difference between backup and restore is that disaster recovery is focused on the recovery aspect of data preservation. With your data saved in another location, you have the ability to restore any information lost from a data loss incident. It’s less about data backup vs disaster recovery and more about using the two practices together.
