Small Business Backup: Shocking Facts

Backup methods of small, medium and enterprise businesses are well documented.  However there are thousands of micro companies who we know very little about.  Leading online backup provider PerfectBackup.co.uk has recently completed a survey of 5,000 micro companies. The reason for the survey was to gain a fundamental understanding of their current backup methods and the consequences of data loss.

A micro business is defined as a company with less than 10GB of data and a maximum 10 staff. All companies were contacted by telephone and are located in the United Kingdom. The vertical market of each business was not surveyed.

The findings were surprising, of the 5,000 businesses surveyed 97% deemed their data to be of high importance or critical importance but only 37% back up daily and 32% do not backup at all.

Below you will find survey questions and a summary of answers.

How important is your business data?

• 3% considered their data to be of little importance and would have little effect on trading if lost.
• 66% considered their data to be important and would incur a high financial consequence id data was lost but business would survive.
• 31% considered their data to be critical and is more than likely business would cease to trade if data was lost.

What is your current backup method?

• 32% do not backup at all
• 36% backup to an external disk
• 5% backup to external disk and remove offsite
• 12% backup to tape
• 2% backup to tape and remove offsite
• 13% use an online/offsite backup solution

Current Backup Frequency

• 37% backup daily
• 19% backup twice a week
• 28% backup weekly
• 10% backup monthly
• 6% backup less than once per month

Have you suffered data loss within the last 2 years?

• 37% of businesses surveyed had suffered data loss within the past 2 years.

Reason for data loss?

• 19% due to hardware failure
• 2% due to software failure
• 1% due to malicious attack
• 47% due to human error
• 27% due to act of god
• 4% other

Do you carry out test restores?

• 94% do not
• 6% test their backup at least every month

Is your current backup plan sufficient?

• 32% feel their backup plan is sufficient.
• 15% do not have a sufficient backup plan and do not intend to change or improve current backup method.
• 4% do not have a sufficient backup plan and do intend to change or improve methods as soon as possible.
• 39% do not have a sufficient backup plan and do intend to change or improve methods but do not know how or have the time to investigate.

Summary
Over the last 2 years, 37% of businesses surveyed have lost data. Despite the acknowledged importance of their data 68% of businesses do not backup at least once per week.

Given the fact that businesses are ever increasingly reliant on their data is was a shock to find out that 32% of businesses surveyed do not back up at all even though they still deem their data to be important.

This survey illustrates one key fact. Micro sized businesses value their business data as much as any other larger business however they are not able to protect it to the same level. The main perceived challenges faced by micro businesses are financial, technical and time.