For many businesses, backup is something that sits quietly in the background until the day it’s needed. When that day comes, having the right backup strategy can mean the difference between a minor inconvenience and a major outage.
At Highstream, we design backup solutions to protect against two very different risks: data loss and cyber attacks.
Protecting Against Everyday Data Loss
Accidents happen. Files are deleted, folders are overwritten, emails disappear, and data can become corrupted.
A good backup allows us to quickly restore lost information and get your team back to work with minimal disruption. Whether a file was deleted this morning or you need to recover an earlier version from last week, backups provide a safety net for your business.
The Growing Risk of Ransomware
While accidental data loss remains common, cyber attacks have become one of the biggest threats facing modern organisations.
Businesses are increasingly relying on cloud services such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, allowing employees to work from the office, at home, or on the move. While these tools provide flexibility, they also make data more accessible and increase the importance of having a resilient backup strategy.
Ransomware attacks are designed to lock organisations out of their data and demand payment for its release. In many cases, attackers will target both live systems and any backups they can access.
That’s why simply having a backup is no longer enough.
Why We Store Backups in Different Locations
A key principle of any backup strategy is ensuring that copies of your data are stored separately from the original.
For example:
- Cloud-based data should be backed up to a local device.
- Local server data should be backed up to another site or cloud location.
- Backup copies should exist in more than one place.
This approach protects your business against a range of scenarios, including:
- Accidental deletion
- Hardware failure
- Cyber attacks
- Fire or flood damage
- Theft of equipment
If one copy is unavailable, another remains accessible.
The Role of Air-Gapped Backups
For customers using our local backup solution, we recommend adding two removable USB storage drives.
These drives provide an additional layer of protection through a process known as air-gapping.
Here’s how it works:
- The backup system regularly copies your data to one of the drives.
- Once the backup is complete, that drive is disconnected and stored safely.
- The second drive is then connected for the next backup cycle.
- The process continues by rotating the drives on a regular schedule.
Because one drive is always disconnected from the network, it cannot be reached by malware, ransomware, or hackers.
Even if an attacker were able to access your systems and your primary backup device, there would still be a separate, protected copy of your data available.
Why We Recommend Rotating Two Drives
After the initial backup, future backups only copy changes, making the process much quicker and more efficient.
By rotating two drives, you maintain:
- A current backup connected to the system.
- A protected backup stored safely away from the network.
This simple process provides an extra layer of resilience and significantly improves your ability to recover from a serious cyber incident.
In most cases, we recommend swapping the drives weekly, although the schedule can vary depending on the amount of data being protected.
Recovery When It Matters Most
The real value of an air-gapped backup becomes clear when something goes wrong.
When a business experiences a ransomware attack, the priority is usually getting operational again as quickly as possible. Organisations without protected backups can find themselves facing prolonged downtime and difficult decisions about whether to pay a ransom.
With an air-gapped backup in place:
- Recovery times can be significantly reduced.
- Critical business data remains protected.
- Downtime is kept to a minimum.
- Attackers lose much of their leverage.
Backup Is About Business Continuity
Backups are not simply an IT requirement. They are a key part of keeping your business running when the unexpected happens.
By combining local backups, off-site protection, and air-gapped storage, organisations can be confident that their data remains protected against both everyday mistakes and modern cyber threats.
If you’d like to review your current backup arrangements or discuss how an air-gapped backup solution could strengthen your resilience, the Highstream team would be happy to help – click here to contact us.
