Learn why backup for mobile devices is becoming increasingly important.
Whether it’s our personal lives or time spent at work, the majority of us are reliant on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. And while this provides incredible convenience and has transformed the way we go about our everyday tasks, it also raises a number of issues around keeping data safe and secure, as well as issues around compliance and data protection.
In terms of how we spend our ‘digital time’, it’s unsurprising that smartphones that make up the majority, so it’s now more important than ever that businesses that offer handsets to their workforce have procedures in place that support this shift in working behaviour.
Whether it’s a company-supplied device, or a personal device used through a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, if company data is stored on or is accessed via a mobile handset, it needs to be protected. That includes security software, device management (DM) software, and most definitely a means of backing that data up.
Why back up your mobile?
There are several reasons why a backup for mobile devices is necessary. Firstly, for devices that are either lost or stolen, businesses need a way of recovering any data that was stored. Even the loss of a simple list of contact takes time to rebuild and is a potential leak of sensitive information.
In addition, as malware attacks become increasingly sophisticated and target a wider range of devices, backups are evermore necessary in order to recover what may become infected. There are also very few of us that can, hand on heart, say they’ve never deleted something by accident, so there’s yet another good reason for having a backup in place.
But it’s not enough to just look after the data itself, businesses need to be able to show that it’s being correctly looked after for compliance purposes. Backing up on a regular basis and having a proper audit trail of when things were saved and what their location is, is therefore essential.
Types of backup for mobile
When it comes to backing up your mobile, there are essentially two choices. You can save to a local device, or you can use cloud-based services. A local backup, to a USB drive, for example, may be attractive – you can hold it in your hand, lock it in the safe, store it off site and generally cherish it. But it’s a less than perfect solution.
First, you have to remember to plug it in and take a backup, something that can be surprisingly easy to forget in the day-to-day running of a business as well as leaving it wide open to human error. Secondly, it can become damaged or misplaced. It’s pointless having a backup that is kept next to your phone if they both get misplaced, stolen or lost in a fire.
Increasingly, therefore, the solution of choice is to back up to the cloud and because it can be done automatically, it’s incredibly convenient and allows for much leaner business processes. You can’t forget to do a cloud backup, files are automatically updated to the cloud copy as soon as they’re saved.
Because the data is stored on a remote service, you don’t have to worry about keeping an off-site copy because it’s done for you. You can also ensure that the information is properly secured and protected by encryption, so it helps you comply with data protection legislation such as the inception of GDPR on May 25.
Data recovery advantages
Backups prove their worth in instances when you need to get something back. Whether it’s a single file or the entire contents of a device, it’s here again that cloud scores. There’s no need to search for the right drive or fetch it from another location.
Provided that you have an internet connection and can access the cloud service, then your backup for mobile devices is available and can be recovered quickly. Of course, a fast connection is important to make this workable, so it’s best to use your office WiFi rather than rely on mobile data.
With many available cloud backup solutions, it’s also possible to retrieve different versions of a file. This means that if you’ve accidentally overwritten an important document, you can still recover it – even two or three versions back if needed.
It is becoming increasingly important to backup all of your data, therefore, it’s essential that if you make the choice to back up your mobile devices with a reputable cloud backup service provider, you select one who is able to meet your business demands.
