Understanding the Role of Managed IT Services in Data Backup and Recovery

If you haven’t looked at recent statistics for cybercrime, prepare yourself for a shock. Every day, hackers launch about 4,000 successful cyber-attacks, while businesses and consumers detect about 560,000 insertions of malware. Every 14 seconds, a company gets hit with a ransomware attack, which in 2022 resulted in damages of $8.4 trillion dollars globally. Hackers also access business data, creating breaches that cost businesses an average of $4.35 million apiece. Three years ago, Cybercrime magazine reported on predictions that global data breaches would cause $10.5 trillion in business losses annually by 2025. Those assessments, shocking at the time, now seem rather conservative.

But it’s not just criminal activity you must worry about. A natural disaster, such as a flood or fire, can damage servers, and even a brief power outage can corrupt files so data is lost. Given the host of threats to your data security and storage, what is the best plan for your business?

Avoiding costly breakdowns along the cyber highway

Most car drivers wouldn’t know how to repair their vehicle if a part failed. In fact, when it comes to basic maintenance, such as changing their oil, very few drivers undertake those tasks themselves. Lack of knowledge, tight schedules, lack of desire, and the existence of economical alternatives all persuade most people to outsource their vehicle maintenance to professionals. Millions of drivers also contract with AAA, so if they’re ever stranded on the road, a tow to a safe location is only minutes away. How much more sense would professional assistance make if their vehicles were under constant attack?

Which brings us to your small business network. Ongoing professional oversight is necessary because parts wear out, software becomes obsolete, and outside forces can disrupt service. And a worst-case cyber-attack can feel an awful lot like you’ve stalled out far from home in a very sketchy neighborhood.

Managed IT provides data solutions for small businesses

Enter Managed IT Services. Our job as a Managed Service Provider is to be proactive about threats that untrained eyes might never notice. In addition to general maintenance and network oversight, MSPs provide affordable, scalable, and reliable solutions for data security and recovery.

The benefits of Managed IT for data security and recovery include:

• Proactive monitoring— If your security software needs an upgrade, or a special patch for a new type of malware, an MSP will make the update ahead of the threat.
• Recovery and restoration on a 24/7/365 basis— If your company uses your network around the clock, or if you just want to know it will be running when you arrive in the morning, you want ‘round the clock security and service. If disaster strikes in the off-hours, your Managed IT team will not wait until morning to start working on recovery. You get an immediate response.
• Minimal downtime— When it comes to a cyber-attack on your business, the question is not if, but when. Because a managed backup has duplicate files ready to go, you can resume operations without rebuilding your database or paying ransom to a hacker. Managed IT services work with you to set parameters for recovery time and recovery point to ensure that backups happen frequently enough to keep pace with your business, minimizing any loss of data.
• Affordability — Because you are outsourcing data storage and security, you don’t have a huge capital investment in hardware, which you would have to maintain and regularly replace. You also don’t have to pay the full salaries and benefits of your IT professionals. Yet, you get ‘round the clock service, which you couldn’t get from a staff with fixed hours and vacation days.
• More extensive knowledge — When you have an in-house IT team, their focus becomes your equipment and your software. MSPs serve a wide variety of clients, so we have a broader range of knowledge that we’re continuously adding to. We observe more of what is going on in the field of business technology, and we can apply that knowledge to your security, storage, and recovery challenges.

If you are only maintaining your business network on an ad hoc basis, consulting IT pros only when something goes wrong, it’s time to reevaluate that strategy. The risks are too great to simply “set it, then forget it,” and hope for the best. In the run-up to a cyber-attack, you’re not going to see a red engine icon light up on the dash before your network crashes. But by contracting with a reputable MSP, such as KMF Technologies, you can keep your network safe and running.