Data Backup for UAE Businesses: What to Back Up, Where to Keep It and How Often to Run It

A backup is a separate copy of your data, kept somewhere else, that you can return to as it was on an earlier day. Two things are often mistaken for it. The first is sync, the feature that keeps one folder identical on your laptop, your phone and a cloud account. Sync copies every change at once, including a deletion and files that ransomware has just encrypted, so it protects you from a lost laptop, not from a mistake. The other is the mirrored disk inside a server, the second disk that keeps it running when one fails. It protects against a hardware fault, but it copies a deletion or an infection to both disks at the same moment.

What makes a copy a backup is distance and history. Distance means it lives on different equipment, ideally in a different place, so whatever damages the original cannot reach the copy. History means it keeps earlier versions, so you can go back to last Tuesday's file rather than only the latest one, which may already be the damaged one.

The useful question is not whether your files are in the cloud or on a server, but whether a separate, dated copy exists that the original's problems cannot touch.

Most offices back up the shared folder and stop there. Data backup for business starts instead with a list of everything you would need to work tomorrow if the office were lost: the file server or NAS, the accounting or ERP database, the email and files in your cloud services, the laptops where people keep their own work, and the settings of the firewall, switches and phone system, which take days to rebuild from memory.

Databases need care. An accounting system or ERP keeps writing to its files while it runs, so a plain copy of the folder can catch it in the middle of a transaction and refuse to open later. The backup has to use the database's own export, or a tool that pauses it cleanly, and the first test restore is how you find out which one works.

Cloud services need a closer look. The provider keeps your email and files available, but its job is to keep the service running, not to keep a history you control. A mailbox emptied by an employee before leaving, or a folder encrypted through a synced laptop, can disappear from the cloud as well, so give your cloud email and files a backup of their own, with a retention period you choose.

Some data may not need a backup at all. Camera recorders usually overwrite old footage after a few weeks, and copying it would multiply the storage for little gain, so note what you leave out on the same list.

The 3-2-1 backup rule is the simplest test of a backup plan. Keep three copies of your data: the original and two backups. Keep them on two different kinds of storage, so one fault cannot take both, for example a NAS in the office and a cloud service. And keep one copy off site, so a fire, water from the floor above or a theft cannot take everything at once.

Ransomware has added a fourth point. Attackers now look for the backups before they encrypt anything, because a business without backups is far more likely to pay. So one copy should stay out of their reach: offline, such as a drive that is disconnected and taken away, or immutable, meaning storage that refuses to change or delete a backup until its retention period ends, whoever asks. The accounts that run the backups should also be separate from the everyday administrator accounts, so one stolen password cannot open both.

A plan that meets the 3-2-1 rule and keeps one copy out of reach covers the common ways an office loses data, from a failed disk to a flooded server room.

Related:Server Room Requirements for UAE Offices

Local backup means a copy on equipment you own, usually a NAS, a small storage device on your network, or a backup server in the office. Restores are quick, because the data travels over your own network, and once the equipment is bought there is no storage bill. Its weakness is that it shares the office's fate: whatever damages the server can damage the NAS beside it.

Cloud backup for a business sends a copy to a provider's data centre. It is off site from the first day and grows without new hardware. But the first full upload can take days over an office internet line, large restores are slower than from a device in the office, and the storage is billed for as long as you keep it. Ask where the provider keeps the copy, and how you would get all of it back at once if you needed to.

When you weigh local backup against cloud backup, the answer for most UAE offices is both, often called hybrid backup: a local copy for quick restores of everyday mistakes, and a cloud copy for the day the office itself is the problem.

How often should you back up data? Start from one question: how much work could the business afford to redo? If losing a day of invoices and email would hurt, back up at least once a day. If losing a morning would hurt, back up several times a day, which modern backup tools do without anyone noticing.

The schedule usually mixes two types of backup: full and incremental. A full backup copies everything and takes the longest. An incremental backup copies only what changed since the last backup, so it is quick and small, and the backup tool puts the pieces back together when you restore. A common pattern is a full backup once a week and incremental backups in between, every day or several times a day.

Retention is the other half: how long each copy is kept. Keeping only last night's backup is not enough, because many problems are found late, a file deleted three weeks ago or an infection that went unnoticed for a month. A practical backup retention policy keeps daily copies for a few weeks, weekly copies for a few months and monthly copies for a year or more, adjusted to what your accountant and your contracts expect you to keep.

Backup and disaster recovery go together. The backups are half of recovering from a bad day; the other half is knowing what you will do with them, written down before that day comes. A disaster recovery plan for a small business does not need many pages. It answers four questions: which systems come back first, who restores them, how long the business can manage without each one, and where people work while the office or the server is out of action.

The order matters, because everything cannot come back at once. In most offices email and the accounting system come first, then the shared files, then the rest. Writing that order down, with the names and phone numbers of the people involved, saves a whole morning of confusion.

Then test it. Backups prove themselves only when someone restores real files from them onto a different machine and times how long it takes. Our guide to protecting a business from cyber attacks explains how to run that test, and what to do in the first moments of a ransomware attack.

Related:Protecting a UAE Business from Cyber Attacks

There is no standard price for backup solutions, because the cost follows how much data you have and how you protect it. The main costs are the local equipment, such as a NAS and its disks, sized for your data and its growth; the cloud storage, where cloud backup cost depends on how much you keep and for how long; the software that runs and checks the backups, often priced per server, per device or per user; and the setup work to plan, configure and test it all.

Two choices move the cost most: how long you keep copies, and how often you back up. A year of history needs more storage than a month, and backing up several times a day sends more data than once a night. Then come the running costs: the cloud storage itself, new disks for the NAS every few years, and someone who reads the reports and runs the test restores.

We start with a survey of your data and systems, design the backup around what you need to recover and how fast, and give one fixed price for that agreed scope before any work begins.

Related:Cybersecurity