New research by Censuswide on behalf of Beaming has looked at the backup practices of UK small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The research has been published in a new report, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Data Backup & Business Continuity’. The report includes guidance to help businesses improve their backup and business continuity practices.
Key findings from the research include:
- Just one in four UK businesses today consistently pursue good backup practices. 22% of companies systematically back up data to a specialist offsite facility or provider, with full knowledge and control of backup procedures and where their data is held. 34% maintain an air-gapped data backup physically isolated from the internet and 29% encrypt data as it travels between their primary data centre or business site and backup location.
- Around half of businesses engage in bad backup practices, making copies of data in a flawed way. 53% do not encrypt their data. 31% make backups, but not frequently enough, and 17% keep copies in the exact location as the original data, leaving them vulnerable to events such as fire or flood. 25% backup manually to external hard drives or discs, a process that can be inconsistent and prone to human error.
- 28% of businesses rely on cloud providers’ standard storage approaches, which tend to replicate data rather than provide multiple backup options and retention periods can be insufficient for those with extended compliance requirements. Firms using this option usually cannot apply bespoke security settings or ensure data is stored fully compliant with rules like the General Data Protection Regulation.
