IT Backup Is Not Business Continuity
Posted on Thu, Feb 02, 2012
By Howard Podgurski
I need to circle back to a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago that addresses the issues business owners and managers should know about system backups. It seems that I have overcomplicated the requirements of backups and business continuity for nontechnical business managers.
Simply put, backups are capable of protecting against data loss, but they do not protect against downtime.
When considering a backup solution, it is important to evaluate two key metrics. The first is recovery time objective (RTO), which is how long it will take to get data back up after a failure or loss. The second is recovery point objective (RPO), which is based on how frequently backups should be taken based on how much data one is willing to lose in the event of a failure.
While most IT backup solutions allow a business to survive after a data loss, business continuity solutions should allow a business to operate like the data was never lost in the first place.
Business owners need to realize that backups alone are not enough to protect their IT systems. True business continuity requires planning and a process of continuous management and support.