Backup and Disaster Recovery Basics for Small Business

Follow the 3-2-1 backup rule: three copies of your data, on two different media types, with one copy offsite. For small businesses this means daily backups to a local NAS plus cloud backups to Azure, AWS, or a managed service. The offsite copy protects against fire, flood, and theft. Immutable cloud storage prevents ransomware from deleting your backups.

Separate file-level and image-level backups. File backups let you restore individual documents quickly. Image backups capture entire servers or workstations for full system recovery in hours instead of days. Run file backups daily and image backups weekly. For critical servers, consider continuous replication to a standby VM for recovery times under one hour.

Test restores monthly, not just once at setup. A backup you have never restored is not really a backup. Pick random files, restore to a test location, and verify integrity. Quarterly, run a full disaster recovery drill: restore a complete server to spare hardware and confirm applications start and data is intact. Document how long each restore takes.

Encrypt backups and protect credentials with AES-256 encryption for data at rest and in transit. Store backup admin passwords in a password manager, never in spreadsheets. If ransomware compromises your network, attackers hunt for backup credentials. Keep them segmented and require MFA for backup console access.

Define recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives for each system. Your accounting server might need 1-hour RPO (lose at most one hour of data) and 4-hour RTO (back online in four hours), while a marketing website tolerates 24-hour RPO and 48-hour RTO. These goals drive backup frequency, replication strategy, and budget.

Keep versioned backups for at least 30 days. Ransomware can hide for weeks before encrypting. If your only backup is last night and already infected, you have no clean restore point. Retain daily snapshots for 30 days and monthly snapshots for a year. This also helps with accidental deletions and compliance requirements.

Have an offsite DR kit: a printed runbook with recovery steps, key phone numbers, backup credentials on encrypted USB, and emergency contacts. If your office is inaccessible or email is down, you need a way to start recovery. Store at a founder home, bank safe deposit box, or secondary location.

Automate monitoring and alerting. Set up email or SMS alerts for failed backup jobs, low disk space, and missed windows. Review backup logs weekly. Many businesses discover backup failures only during a crisis. Modern solutions include dashboards and anomaly detection to catch issues early.

Plan for worst-case: total office loss. Where will you restore servers? Do you have cloud failover, coworking contracts, or remote work plans? Can staff access VPN and cloud apps from home? A disaster recovery plan is not just backups, it keeps the business running. Write a simple one-page plan covering communication, alternate sites, and critical system priorities.

If you need help designing backup strategy, setting up offsite replication, or writing a disaster recovery plan, HelpTek can build resilient data protection for your business. We offer managed backup services with monitoring, testing, and guaranteed recovery SLAs for Santa Fe and Albuquerque businesses.