Every business recognises the critical importance of backups. You have likely heard or read this a hundred times, “Make sure you’re backing up your data.” And chances are, you are… But there is a catch, back-up is not synonymous to restore. If you don’t test your backups, then you are playing a game of dice with your data and the stakes are high.

The False Sense of Security

A common assumption among businesses is that they are protected after they have a backup and disaster recovery system in place. However, backups can, and usually do, fail silently. You might not even realize there’s a problem until it’s too late. Maybe your files were corrupted, jobs were misconfigured, or, simply, the storage failed.

We have seen this scenario several times companies succeed in backing up everything and when it is time to restore, they could not pull a single usable file. Why? They have never tested the restore process.

Simply put: if you have not tested your backups, they are not really backups, but rather a hope.

Backups vs. Recoverability

There is a big difference between simply having backups and having backups that are capable of being recovered. It is easy to presume that your systems are diligently executing those night jobs, saving data into the cloud, and functioning as designed. However, when it comes to a ransomware attack or hardware failure, presume means nothing.

In this scenario, a crypto locker infects your whole network and encrypts your vital files. You quickly go to your backups and think, “Thank goodness the backups are there,” only to discover they have not been running properly for months or the files are corrupt with no chance of being recovered. Just like that, a simple headache turns into a business crisis.

In these instances, testing validates:

• The backup completed.
• The data is able to be restored.
• The restore process works quickly enough to meet your recovery time objectives.
• The backup includes all the data you need (rather than some random folder from last year).

How Often Should You Test?

In an ideal world, you would test your backups at least every three months, if not every month. For important systems, you might want to test every week. Testing does not have to consume your time. Even just a simple spot-check (restoring some specific key files or launching a test VM) will provide you with confidence that your data will be there when it counts. For more sensitive types of environments, it may be smart to do a full disaster recovery test at least every year. This will help you simulate real-world events and will ensure that everyone’s on the same page when it counts.

It’s About Business Continuity

Ultimately, backups go beyond merely archiving files they’re about keeping your business or organization in business. The cost of downtime is expensive. The loss of data can be catastrophic. Clients lose trust; productivity stalls; and recovery can be expensive.

Regularly testing your backups is one of the most straightforward and effective ways to ensure continuity for your business or organization. It changes the statement, “we hope it works” to “we know we’re covered.”

Not Sure Where to Start?

If you don’t remember the last time you tested your backup or if you never tested your backup you should do something about it. You may have cloud-based systems or a local backup drive, or you may simply rely on a managed backup solution, but the importance of testing can’t be overstated.

At Accel IT, we guide companies to implement backup systems and test the systems. The backup that matters to your company is the backup that you can recover when you are hit by an outage or data loss.