Avoid disasters: make backups of business assets and websites a must

Do you have a backup of all your business data and your website?

A sudden attack on your web host or an employee mistake can wreak havoc without warning.

The same goes for any information about your business stored on your computer. If your computer suddenly becomes infected with a virus and you had to format your hard drive, it would likely have a major impact on your business.

So what should you do to prepare for data loss?

Are your website and domain name safe from being taken hostage? Read our article: Keeping your digital business assets safe from being replaced

Back up your website

Sometimes website hacks may not be obvious, and you really should be on the lookout for any suspicious activity.

Unfortunately, hackers can do more than just break your website. In the past, some websites have been secretly hijacked with new information added without your knowledge.

The reason may be that another website tracks its users or controls what it is doing to help a competing company. Check your pages for any unusual content additions, as well as any new plugins that you haven’t added yourself.

If you notice something, then you have a problem. Without backups of your website, that problem can be very difficult to solve.

Try this free Sucuri security and malware scanner to see if you currently have a problem.

With backups you can fix things with just a few clicks!

Backing up your website could be something that is already in place without you knowing. Check with your web host and see if they already have automatic backups enabled and make sure you understand how to do a “rollback” where you can restore a previous version of your website that was backed up before encountering an error.

By doing this, you can literally restore your website in just a few clicks and save yourself a lot of stress.

If you don’t have backups, see if your CMS (like WordPress) has a backup tool / plugin that you can employ. There are many free options to choose from depending on how your website was built, such as UpdraftPlus for WordPress.

If your website is 100% custom, the easiest thing to do is to use a File Transfer Protocol tool like Filezilla and manually download your website to your PC. You can then store it on a cloud storage service or external hard drive in case you ever run into a problem and need a working version of your site. If your website is not very large, you can simply compress the content and send it by email.

If you would rather have someone else take care of your website security and backup measures for you, please contact us as we have a monthly maintenance plan to take this burden off your shoulders.

Make a backup of your business data

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners have their business on their computer.

While many files are searchable in your email, you don’t want to start combing through emails for spreadsheets. Therefore, it is a very good idea to make regular backups of your computer data.

This process is easy and can become a routine habit once you have done it several times.

The first step will really help with something mentioned in the backup part of the website above and that is to use Winzip or Winrar.

These programs compress the files into a single file so that you have everything in one place. Some emails restrict the sending of these types of files for security reasons, so you may want to back up your data with a free cloud storage system like GDrive or Dropbox.

After installing Winzip or Winrar, you will be able to right click on the folder on your desktop with all your business information and simply select add to archive. This will create a shredded copy of everything in that folder for easy storage.

Then head over to your preferred storage point and add the archive. You can drag it to an external drive or add it to a cloud. Either way, you will have all that information available at your fingertips when you need it.

Avoid disaster and implement!

These may seem like trivial things or a huge hassle to deal with … until you need them.

Anyone who has ever experienced a hacked website or a compromised hard drive knows that in hindsight it is 20/20 and the words “if only I had …” suddenly become woefully normal.

Backups are like oil changes and should be done periodically to ensure your business continues to run without devastating interruptions.