IT Glossary
What is a backup?
The safety copy of your data, kept separately, from which you rebuild the business after a deletion, a failure or an attack.
There are two kinds of company: those that take backups and those that have not yet lost data. A backup is a copy of vital information — accounts, the website, customer databases, documents — held separately from the original, so that a fire, ransomware or a plain accidental deletion cannot take both at once. The rule of thumb is called 3-2-1: three copies of the data, on two types of media, one of them in a different location, which in practice means the cloud. Equally important and almost universally ignored: an untested backup is a hope rather than a copy, and the only way to know it works is a trial restore performed on a schedule. Three questions are worth asking about your own business today. Which data would genuinely hurt to lose? How old can the most recent copy be before that becomes a crisis? And who most recently confirmed, by doing it, that restoring actually works?
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Why it matters for your business
Ransomware loses its leverage
With recent copies isolated from the network you decline the ransom and restore — the attack becomes a bad day rather than the end of the business.
Human error becomes reversible
An overwritten file, a deleted database, a site broken by an update — all of it comes back from backup in minutes or hours instead of never.
A compliance and contract requirement
The GDPR requires appropriate protection measures, and corporate clients ask about your backup policy explicitly — you either have one or you lose the contract.
Frequently asked questions
How often should company data be backed up?
The rule is: as much as you are willing to lose. For accounting and orders, daily is the minimum, while critical systems are copied continuously or hourly; for a brochure website, weekly may be enough. Always automatic — a manual backup is a forgotten backup.
Is cloud backup safe for company data?
Yes, on two conditions: encryption, so data is enciphered before it leaves your premises and the key stays with you, and an account protected with two-factor authentication. The cloud solves precisely the weak point of local copies — that they disappear together with the office in a fire, a theft or a ransomware event.
Our hosting company takes backups — is that enough?
Check three things: how often they run, how long copies are retained, and whether you can restore yourself, quickly. A hosting provider's backup exists for their disasters, not yours; for the website your revenue depends on, you also want an external copy under your own control.
What is a trial restore and why do specialists insist on it?
It is a dress rehearsal: you take the backup and rebuild the system on a test environment, with a stopwatch running. You learn whether the copy is complete, how long recovery takes and what is missing from the procedure — before any of those answers actually matter.
Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247