Do I need a testing plan for data backups?

Otava continues its business continuity series of videos on data backup and replication by explaining the importance of testing your restore process.

Steven: There should definitely be a testing plan around the backup process. Backups are nice. Restores are critical, right? It doesn’t matter if you back things up if you can’t restore it. Whether you’re doing backups with a provider, whether you’re doing it locally with your small business, always test the restore process. Always test the restore process. Always test the restore process. I’m saying it three times because it’s that important.

That would mean again talking about what are your most important files? Is it finance? Is it HR? Is it some CAD drawing that you have for you company? Make sure that if it’s in your backup catalog that you take that data and you do a test restore to a system and make sure that that works.

The same thing with any cloud provider. They should be able to work with you and you should be able to say, “Okay, we have this file out there. We need to go back three days and we would like you to do a test restore and put it in this specific location for us.” Any good cloud provider, backup provider, worth their salt should be able to work with you and provide that for you as just part of the service. That way you can validate that the data you’re backing up is actually retrievable in the event of emergency.