No matter what the size of your business, ensuring the safety of your data is vitally important. The loss of data at your company could result in your business losing thousands, or even millions, of dollars that could then put its very existence at risk. The challenge many companies face is how to balance the need for safe and reliable backups with the added costs that these systems often force the business to incur. There are several methods that companies are using to ensure their data is safe from hardware failure and accidental or deliberate deletion.

Tape Backup
In a rather traditional approach, tape backups are run each day when the business is closed, backing up the data changes of the day to a tape. This tape must then be removed from the system and taken to an offsite location in order to be sure the data remains safe. For smaller businesses, this is often one of the easiest and most affordable methods for backing up data, but it comes with a few limitations.
Tape backup systems can only back up data that is not being used, limiting companies to one backup for each day of operation. As files rapidly change in today's environment, this could leave you with missing data that did not back up or data that is slightly out of date. You are also dependent on the reliability of tape as a backup medium as well. Tape, while considered reliable, can fail and leave your business without a good data backup despite your best efforts.

Online Backup Systems
In today's world with lightning fast Internet speeds, it has now become possible to backup data online to another location. The benefits of this system are that it is often more reliable than traditional tape systems and that it is far more flexible with the ability to backup your files more than once per day, depending on the amount of data you have to backup. It also offers a convenient offsite location in the case of a natural disaster at your offices. No matter what happens at your office, your data will be safely stored in another location ready to be used in a moment’s notice.
The costs of online systems are often based on how much data you have to backup. Depending on the amount, the prices can become unaffordable for even the largest of businesses. These types of systems also may require an additional investment of a secure data line to be sure data backed up online remains safe from hackers.

While both of these systems require an investment by the company, the investment is small compared to the costs of losing your valuable data. A simple hardware failure could result in the demise of your business if you do not invest ahead of time in systems designed to backup and protect your company's valuable data. The business world is increasingly driven by data, meaning that the ability to manage that data and be sure it is kept safe regardless of what problems or disasters arise has never been more important to businesses, regardless of their size. Researching and implementing proper backup systems that meet the needs of your company should be one of the top priorities of your IT department.