Company Data Backup: The 60-Minute Audit for a Small Business

"We have backups" - almost every company says so when the conversation turns to data. But when did anyone at your firm last try to actually restore something from those backups? If the answer is "never", you do not have protection - you have hope. Company data backup proves itself at the worst possible moment: after a disk failure, a ransomware attack or a simple mistake by an employee who overwrote an important file. The good news: you can run an honest backup audit yourself, in 60 minutes, with no in-house IT department. Below is the plan, minute by minute.

The 3-2-1 rule: company data backup in plain words

The whole theory of backups fits into one rule. The 3-2-1 rule says: keep three copies of your data (the original and two copies), on two different types of storage, with one copy outside the company. Why spread things out? Because any single location can fail: disks die, laptops get stolen, an office can flood, a cloud account can be hijacked. A setup that works: invoices live on the accountant's computer (copy one), each night they are copied to the company network drive (copy two, a different medium), and once a day an encrypted copy goes to the cloud (copy three, off-site). One event - fire, theft, malware - no longer takes everything at once.

What to back up: the places companies forget

Backup is not just the "Documents" folder. Go through the list and answer two questions for each item: where does it live and who backs it up?

• Accounting - the accounting software database, invoices, contracts.
• CRM and order system - client history is often the most valuable data in the company.
• Shared drives - Google Drive or OneDrive synchronize files, but they do not protect against deletion or overwriting - you need a separate copy with version history.
• Email - arrangements made with clients can be worth as much as contracts.
• Website and application - files, the database and server configuration.
• Passwords and licenses - without them, restoring everything else takes weeks.

Four typical gaps in company backups

These patterns repeat regardless of industry:

• The copy sits on the same disk as the original - one failure takes both at once.
• No versioning - each new copy overwrites the old one, so a mistake noticed a week later already sits in every copy. Keep versions from days and weeks back.
• Ransomware encrypts backups too - if the backup is mounted as a regular network drive, an attack will encrypt it along with everything else. At least one copy must be offline or protected against overwriting.
• Nobody gets alerts - the backup stopped working six months ago, and the company finds out on the day of the failure.

The checklist: a backup audit in 60 minutes

Block one hour in your calendar and walk through four steps.

Minutes 0-15: list what you have

Write down the systems and places from the list above. For each one note: where the data lives, who is responsible and whether any copy exists.

Minutes 15-30: check how the backup works

How often does it run? Where does it go? How many versions back exist? Does anyone get a notification when it fails? Every "I do not know" goes straight onto your task list.

Minutes 30-45: the restore test

The most important part of the audit. Pick one file and one invoice from last month and try to restore them from the backup onto a clean computer. Time it. If it fails, you have just saved yourself a disaster - you are finding out today, not after a crash.

Minutes 45-60: write down the gaps and assign owners

Every gap gets a person and a deadline. Put a quarterly repeat of the restore test in the calendar too.

What to demand from your website or app vendor

Backups of an online store, a website or a custom system are usually the responsibility of the vendor or the company maintaining it. Demand three things in writing: an automatic nightly backup stored outside the application server, a regular restore test, and clear information about who reacts after a failure and how fast. This is question number one on our list of 10 security questions to ask a software vendor. If the application processes personal data, backups and their encryption are also part of GDPR - our GDPR checklist for applications will help. At Exmoor Software, backup, monitoring and updates are a standard part of app maintenance after launch - within a service subscription from PLN 500/month, detailed in our pricing.

One hour that can save your company

This audit needs no budget and no technical knowledge - just one hour and the courage to check whether "we have backups" is true rather than wishful. If the audit produces a list of gaps around your website or application, we will help you close it. Describe your situation in our quote calculator - you will see an initial price range instantly, get the first reply within 24h, and receive a binding quote after a short call.