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10 January/February 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com FROM THE TRENCHES By Randy Johnston Backup is Still Important - Options and Strategies If you have ultimate responsibility for the data in your ofce or home, you need to consider your strategies, your methods of back ing up data and, ultimately, testing that you can restore from your data. Tis article w i l l ex pla i n opt ions, pit fa l ls a nd cautions on keeping your data safe. Further, you should comply with a w r it ten records retent ion pol ic y. Backup copies, no mater where they are, need to be expired according to pol ic y. T he potent ia l l iabi l it y i n keeping old backup, such as tape or USB sticks, for an extended period of time w ithout managing ex pira- tion is extremely risky. Cloud ven - dors used for backup may also keep backup copies beyond your reten- tion polic y, including copies a fer you leave their service. For example, Microsof deletes your fles within 30 days of leaving their Ofce 365 service, but other vendors keep your data permanently. What Options are Available? Recommendations for good backup var y based on your size, recover y time objective (RTO or amount of t i me to recover), recover y poi nt objective (R PO-how much data you are willing to lose), and your fault tolera nce level . T he qu icker you want to recover and the less data you are willing to lose, the more expen- sive the approach will be. However, relatively shor t RTO and R PO is possible by using backup appliances. Backup appl iances combine sof t- ware and hardware into a product that operates w ith relatively little inter vention to back up your data frequently and securely. Costs vary widely by the solution. Clearly for homes and small frms, USB drives and Network Atached Storage (NAS) units are the low cost alternative, where a few terabytes of storage cost a few hundred dollars per mont h . Sof t w a re f requent ly comes with a NAS for backup pur- poses. However a copy of your data needs to be in some of-site location, w he t he r t h a t i s i n t he c lou d or another home or ofce. Additionally USB and NAS alternatives typically don't backup open fles, SQL data- bases or email fles correctly. W hen of-site cloud storage is used, expect costs in the ffy cent to one dollar (per g igaby te per mont h) ra nge, a lt houg h non-professiona l home g r a d e s t o r a g e i s t y p i c a l l y l e s s expensive. You should not use home grade storage for professional pur- poses because the data does not have adequ ate protec t ion . We e x pec t prov iders to ofer in excess of one terabyte of storage at no charge this yea r. Back up A ppl ia nces va r y i n price between $3,000 and $11,000. Two backup appliances can be used to backup from a primary location to a secondary location, eliminating the cloud storage costs, and poten- tially speeding the recovery process. I f you contact me directly, I' d be pleased to review options with you directly, help you f lter and select possible options, and obtain accu- rate pricing estimates for your situ- ation. Tere would be no beter use of my time than helping you or your frm prevent a loss of data. T he B ac k up Stor a ge O pt ion s chart below illustrates some of the options available: 10 January/February 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com Randy Johnston is executive vice president and partner of K2 Enterprises and Network Management Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized educator, consultant and writer with over 30 years' experience. He can be contacted at randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com . D ata is king. Keeping it stored safely and securely is critical. W hether you are operating in the cloud, from an ofce, or from your home you need to be thoughtful about your data. In my professional life, strategies for keeping data safe have been mandatory for over 40 years. A consistent rule: to be able to recover, we have to have your data, no mater what. Further, the goal is to not lose any data on our watch. APPROACH BENEFITS Run in the cloud with all Agreements provide for backup so you can "not worry Software as a Service about it" OR you can do a reverse backup from the applications or at a cloud cloud and have copies of the data in the cloud hosting service and in your offce Tape drive Long archival life USB drive Inexpensive Network Attached Storage Inexpensive, faster than USB, may have provision for (NAS) drive sharing in and out of the offce Web based backup Simple, off-site, easy to restore single fles, may be near continuous Appliance based backup Frequent copies of data made (typically every 15 minutes), rapid single fle restore, multiple versions of data stored, can run as substitute virtual servers, can back up to the web or another backup appliance in a different location Storage Area Network Can allow continuous operation even in the event of a (SAN) replication catastrophic failure. High probability of losing little or no data. Replication of virtual machines possible with a product like VEEAM BACKUP STORAGE OPTIONS cpa_10-11_Johnston.indd 10 2/5/14 11:42 AM