5 Backup Mistakes That Could Cost Your Business Everything

Data is the lifeblood of your business. From customer records and financials to projects and emails, losing access to your data, even for a short time, can grind operations to a halt. Backups are meant to be your safety net, but too often, businesses discover too late that their backups aren’t as reliable as they thought.

Here are 5 common backup mistakes that could leave your business exposed, and how to avoid them:

1. Relying Only on Local Backups

External hard drives or local servers are better than nothing, but they’re vulnerable to theft, fire, flooding, or simple hardware failure. If your only copy of data is onsite, a single disaster could wipe it out completely.
Fix: Always pair local backups with secure cloud backups for true redundancy.

2. Not Testing Restores Regularly

Many businesses assume their backups are working, until they try to restore and realize files are missing or corrupted. If you’ve never tested a restore, you don’t really know if your backup works.
Fix: Schedule routine test restores to confirm backups are complete and usable.

3. Infrequent Backups

Backing up once a week (or worse, once a month) leaves you vulnerable to losing days or weeks of work. Imagine re-entering a week’s worth of invoices, emails, or project files.
Fix: Set up automated daily backups, or even real-time backups, so data loss is minimal in the event of failure.

4. Keeping Backups Connected All the Time

If your backup device is always connected, ransomware can infect it along with your main system. Cybercriminals know how to target attached drives and mapped backup locations.
Fix: Use backup solutions that are isolated and include immutable storage, meaning files can’t be altered or deleted once saved.

5. Believing OneDrive (or Google Drive/Dropbox) Is a Backup Solution

Cloud storage tools like OneDrive are great for file sharing and collaboration, but they are not true backups. If a file is deleted, overwritten, or infected with ransomware, that change is synced everywhere, leaving no safe copy.
Fix: Pair cloud storage with a dedicated backup solution that keeps multiple restore points. This ensures you can roll back to a clean version of your files whenever disaster strikes.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

Backups aren’t just about protecting files, they’re about protecting your business, your reputation, and your bottom line. The cost of downtime or lost data far outweighs the investment in a reliable backup and recovery strategy.

If you’re unsure whether your backups are truly protecting you, let’s talk. We’ll review your current setup and help ensure your business is ready for anything.