Data backup software and disaster recovery vendor, Acronis is urging retailers to ensure they are protecting their most valuable asset

Data backup software and disaster recovery vendor, Acronis is urging retailers to ensure they are protecting their most valuable asset

How would you feel if your company couldn’t access its data for a day? If you lost every record or transaction carried out in your shop over 24 hours? Or if you couldn’t order new stock to keep your shelves full?

Acronis, a provider of backup, disaster recovery and security solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, recently carried out some research into how retailers protect their most valuable digital assets – their data.

RetailTechnology.co.uk spoke to David Blackman, Acronis general manager of Northern Europe, to ask him about the findings.

Retail Technology: Can you tell us why you decided to carry out the research?

Blackman: Everyday we meet retailers that still struggle to protect their systems and data and, more importantly, can quickly and effectively recover in the event of downtime. Therefore, we conducted some independent research to delve into the backup and recovery habits of retail organisations and find out the extent of the problem.

RT: The research reveals that many retail organisations still practice bad backup and recovery habits. What figure was the most surprising and why?

DB: Despite living in a world where retailers operate around the clock, online and offline, the majority of small to midsized retailers are still putting their systems, and therefore their productivity and profitability, at risk by failing to protect them adequately.

Nearly two thirds (62%) of retailers would take a day or more to recover from system failure. Just imagine how a business would cope without its systems and data for a whole day.

It really doesn’t matter what causes the systems to fail, be it a virus attack, software bug or a hardware breakdown the results are pretty much the same. For retailers this could lead to every till going down, with hours or even days of downtime. Without the ability to process orders, the potential lost revenue could be extremely damaging.

RT: What should retail companies be doing to back up and protect their data?

DB: Feedback from our customers shows that retailers out there are backing up their servers at the head office. In addition to this, they are often protecting them automatically, meaning regular backups are in place. Servers are the lifeline of any IT infrastructure so it’s critical that they are safeguarded and backed up regularly.

However, despite backing up their servers, our research found a shocking 32% of organisations still back up their PCs and laptops manually, while 21% do not carry out backups at all. While employees are sometimes encouraged to back up to a network, this doesn’t always work in practice. Many employees save folders loosely on their desktop or make updates to documents when they are out of the office.

In fact, according to analyst estimates, 60% of an organisation’s data is held on workstations, not servers. This means that the majority of your data could be seriously at risk; imagine losing customer databases or customer queries. In short, organisations need to make sure both their workstations and servers are safeguarded, backed-up automatically and preferably centrally managed.

RT: So I guess you’d recommend companies create the correct backup strategy to protect their data?

DB: Yes but remember, backup does not equal recovery. All too often companies think backup equals recovery. This is not the case.

A survey of storage managers by IDC showed that 87% are confident or highly confident that their DR [disaster recovery] processes would allow them to restore the data for their business critical applications. However, only half of those 87% test their DR strategies more than once a year. Even if an organisation is confident that its backups are running frequently, it should ensure that they are regularly tested otherwise it could be left out on a limb. With so much valuable data at stake, retailers need to make a point to run tests on their backups every quarter.

RT: Did the research show how often retail companies were carrying out backups of their systems?

DB: Many SMBs [small-to-midsized businesses] rely on an ‘end-of-day’ backup strategy. Our research unveiled that 65% of retail businesses only run their backups at the end of the day and 12% go a whole week without backing up. However, this can cause problems. If a disaster strikes five minutes before the next backup is due to be made, all the data created that day or even that week could be lost. With accounts, end-of-day billing and salaries all based on this data, a retailer could be seriously out of pocket if its data was lost forever.

RT: In the event of a disaster, that causes major data loss to a business; how confident were those that were polled that they would be able to recover the lost data?

DB: Only two thirds of retailers were confident or very confident that they would recover, which means that a third would struggle. What was also worrying was that a quarter said it would take a week to be back up and running.

RT: How stressed were the IT managers when it come to recovering lost data?

DB: Almost half of retail IT managers surveyed fear the prospect of recovering data after a virus attack or hard drive failure, classing it as either stressful or very stressful.

The survey found one of the main sources of stress is ensuring that the chief executives’ data is protected. 28% of retail organisations class the stress of losing their chief executive’s data as being equivalent to realising that they have forgotten their passport when they arrive at an airport to go on holiday. Equally, another 26% categorised it as being as stressful as being late for a job interview.

When asked who they feel the most pressure from to recover data, 63% feel the strain from their boss, while a quarter of IT managers actually feel the most pressure from themselves.

As with all sources of stress, prevention is better than cure. IT managers should seek to examine their DR strategies to stop it impacting on, not only their company’s wellbeing, but their own health.

RT: What is your answer to resolving these issues?

DB: Retailers need to put DR at the top of their list. The financial and productivity implications that the loss of data has, coupled with the disruption and downtime caused by failure, is enough to make a retailer go out of business. Of primary concern to business leaders is business continuity, providing employees with their IT systems to work on and customers with the ability to communicate and transact with the organisation. However, the reality is that backup and recovery does not need to be difficult to achieve, so organisations need to make sure they put it at the top of their priority list.

If they have a recent backup and a well-conceived recovery plan, the financial and productivity impact on their business can be minimised.