Describe best practice backup procedures for keeping your accounting data at work secure.?

Question

Describe what are prescribed as best practice backup procedures.

Answer 1

Computer Backup Options

Backing up your company's computers is absolutely essential — if you lose computer data, you could also lose your business. The more you can do to protect against data backup nightmares, the more time and money you can reserve for moving the business forward. But there's more than one way to back up your data, depending on your company's budget, the number of computers that require backup, and whether or not you use a network.

Here are a few of the backup options available:

1. Use recordable media. Once upon a time, you could back up your entire computer on a few floppy disks or Zip disks. Those days are now long past — but now we have CD-R and DVD-R media. CD-Rs can hold up to 700MB of data, and double-layer DVD-Rs can hold up to 8.5GB. Depending on the size of your hard drive, though, you may end up spending lots of time burning multiple disks to safeguard your data.

2. Get a second hard disk. You can install a drive that's just as big as your existing hard disk and then copy, or "mirror," all of the data on the second drive. Hard disk prices have dropped considerably, and mirroring a disk makes it easy to replace lost data. But keeping all of your backup data on the same system leaves it vulnerable to the same problems that might affect your primary hard disk.

3. Use an online backup service. These services allow you to upload your data over the Internet to remote servers — if you need to restore lost data, you simply log on to the backup service and download your files. Internet backup services offer several benefits: they're cheap, easy to use, and very reliable. But Internet backups can be slow, and you'll need Internet access to retrieve your backup files. You should never rely only on Internet backups; if the company storing your data goes out of business, your data might vanish too. Read Is It Safe to Store Files on the Internet? to allay some of your concerns about this method.

4. Use a software backup program. A backup utility, like Norton Ghost or the backup utility that comes bundled in Windows XP, can take the headache out of backing up your data. It's not meant to replace any of the three methods above; rather, it just automates the backup process. You tell it when and where, and the program can automatically back up your data to the location of your choice.

What's Better: Local or Network Backups?

If your business uses a network, you'll have to decide whether to back up all of your computers over the network or back up each computer separately. In most cases, you should back up all of the computers on a network along with your file servers; that way, you can purchase a single high-end backup system for your whole network. It's much more expensive to buy a separate backup unit for each computer, and it's a waste of time to lug a portable backup drive from one computer to another.

Answer 2

"Best practice" will vary depending on the nature of the data held, the size of the organisation, and the resources available to it. For most small to medium businesses, regular backups to tape are recommended and there's plenty of good commercial hardware and software that will do this efficiently. A daily backup held on-site is an accepted minimum, and depending on the data, this may be a full or partial system backup. On a weekly basis, a full system backup is usually recommended, with the tape/s held off-site. In all cases, tapes should be held in a secure fireproof environment and be easily retrieved. Obviously, all tapes must be numbered and/or dated, and should work through a rotation system. For example, a simple weekly rotation would require a minimum of five tapes (Mon-Fri). Note that procedures should be fully documented. Also, it should go without saying that all data input must be dated so that data loss can be identified in the event of a system failure which requires a restore from tape.

Answer 3

It is critical to backup your important data. You would be surprised how often hard drives fail and when they do so usually goes your data. I try to backup the data files for any important software that I use. Usually the software will have a backup option that lets you make copies of your data to a folder you select. I create a folder named "BACKUP" on a different hard drive and backup all the data files from the different programs I use to this one folder.

I think backing up the entire computer is a waste of time and disk space. Most of the files you are backing up are easily replaced using your Windows CD. Thats why I do targeted backups of important data. In your case I would certainly target the data files for your accounting program. I like to use a backup software product named Backup Wolf. Itlets you target specific files and folders and backs it up to where ever you choose. Then it has an option for incremental backups for maintenance. This just means it will check all the files and folders since the last backup and only update files that have changed or new files. This makes the backup really fast. You can find Backup Wolf backup software at
http://www.lonewolf-software.com/backupwolf.htm

Answer 4

I have a been a tax accountant for 27 years and over the years the biggest problem I have faced is loss of data, usually because the hard drive fails. I have tried all the recommended back-up procedures but the programs themselves cannot be copied. So, what I finally did was to create a redundant system: two computers, independant of one another, which are kept identical by installing the same programs on both, and making copies daily of all the data files, which are then copied to the other computer. Then, if or when one crashes, all you do is walk over to the second computer and keep working.

Answer 5

Back Up Procedures

Answer 6

Best practices depends on your specific needs.

You can compress your files with WinRAR and setting a password and, then, do backup the RAR file online at Mozy.

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