Why Should You Care About Data Backup in Construction?

Your construction company uses more and more technology every day. Whether it is communications with clients on project plans and specifications, contracts and expected deadlines, or even employee records and financial information. All of the things you do are planned ahead to finish projects on time and make sure your clients are happy. Imagine how far it would set even one of your projects back if halfway through, all of your plans suddenly weren't there. You would find a way to still get the job done, but it won't be to the same quality you or your clients expect and will almost certainly take longer and cost more than you planned for. Make sure you are educated on all of the best practices to keep your business running smoothly and avoid any data loss that would set you back weeks or months of hard work.

Types of Data in Your Kansas City Construction Business

Project Plans and Specifications

Losing your plans and specifications for an ongoing project, or one that is about to start, can massively derail your timeline to complete this job and get started on the next one. That loses you time you could be focusing on the next project, wages for the plans to be redone or another round of measurements to make sure you aren't over or underbuying material, and your reputation with the client since suddenly you have to push back your completion date.

Communication Logs

Communication is key in any business, but especially with your. You have teams of employees, contractors, and the client that all have to be kept in the loop. Not having records of your communications opens you up to a host of problems in the future. You have probably experienced a client saying you promised something when you made it clear it wasn't part of the project. Data backups make sure you always have access to previous communications if a legal or other kind of issue comes up in the future.

Financial Information

You probably have more financial information than you realize, whether it is bank information for employees, invoices for materials, sub-contractors, or your own invoices sent out to clients. All of these will be requested if you are audited, and the IRS does not care about whether it was lost or accidentally deleted.

Inspections & Certifications

You have to keep records of employee and site safety for OSHA, employee certifications, and inspections to make sure your work is up to code with current regulations. You need an easy way to ensure that your records are not lost, and can easily be made available in the event of an audit or litigation brought against you. The better your backup system, the easier and faster it will be to get that information to the parties that need it and get back to work.

How Would Your Data Be Lost?

Accidental Deletion or Corruption of Files

The most common way for data to be lost is either an employee that accidentally deletes something without realizing, or the information becoming corrupt in the years that you have to store it. The only real way to prevent this is to have multiple backups of the data.

Hardware Failures

No matter what happens, a piece of hardware failing is not a pleasant event. Downtime from a failed computer alone can cost you more than the price to replace it. If you also have to worry about recovering the information off that device, not sure whether you will be able to, that is a recipe for little sleep and stressful days. Make sure to have a disaster recovery plan in place for key devices that are integral to your business, but don't make recovering data another part of that already difficult process.

Cybersecurity Breaches

Small businesses are the majority of targets for cyber attacks in recent years. One of the most common types of attacks are ransomware. That means your systems are completely held for ransom, you won't be able to access any information, they will demand a large amount of money to get your data back, and half the time even if you pay it they will delete everything anyways and you will be left with nothing. The easiest way to protect against these attacks is to already have your data backed up to another location. You don't have to negotiate with them anymore, just delete everything, recover your data and be back up and running quickly without having to shell out a large amount of money to possibly get your data back.

Natural Disasters

Being in the Midwest means even if you do everything perfectly, mother nature can always come and ruin your plans with a tornado on short notice. In the event of a natural disaster, you should only be worrying about the safety of yourself and the people you care about. Insurance takes care of the physical damage, but it can't bring back your data from the grave. Make sure that the only thing on your mind is getting away from the disaster if the time ever comes.

Best Practices for Data Security

Just like you have best practices and regulation on what you build, there are best practices for how to handle data protection and data recovery. Anything is better than nothing, but being ignorant of where you are vulnerable is a recipe for disaster.

Regularly Scheduled Backups

Backup your data daily, with weekly snapshots and monthly backups that are stored long-term. What that means in practice is you should do a daily backup that overwrites the previous days backup. Then have a weekly snapshot that takes that days backup and stores it separately and it keeps that weekly backup until the next week replaces the previous. Finally, have a monthly backup of all your data that gets stored permanently for years at least. This makes sure you are always able to use the most recent backup, but won't spend an insane amount on storage for all the backups you have to keep for years if you get audited.

Offsite Storage Outside Kansas City

The standard for data storage is the 3-2-1 rule. That means 3 copies of your data on 2 different types of media, with 1 of them being offsite in the event of a natural disaster. That means you have a copy on your computer, a copy stored in your OneDrive or Google Drive, and a backup copy stored offsite in a data center that is far away from Kansas City. Having your offsite storage in the same city might save you if your building floods, but won't save your data in the event of an earthquake or tornado.

Encryption of Backup Data

Certain data should not only be backed up to make sure you can always access it, but also encrypted to prevent the data from being accessed by anyone other than you. Employee records, social security numbers, client payment information, all of these are things that a hacker would happily sell on the dark web if you don't have them encrypted. Any of this information being lost in a breach would mean you get hit with a huge fine and additional costs to protect the people that had their information compromised.

Testing Backup and Recovery Process

Having a backup is great, but if your systems go down and you need to quickly get back to work in order to meet a deadline, you need to know that your recovery process will work without any issues. Regular testing of your backups and recovery process can show you glaring issues at a time that there isn't any pressure instead of it keeping you from completing your work.

Backup Options for Your Construction Business

Not all backup options are the same, and some are clearly better than others. Below I have different backup options you can use in order of worst to best. Any backup is better than nothing, but some of them come with some big risks.

External Hard Drives

External drives are plugged in via USB and they will hold data and allow you to easily move data from one device to another even if you don't have internet. The problem with these is that they are not a good long term solution for backups. They have to be attached when you need to do a backup, so most times that means either just leaving them plugged in or taking them out every day to manually run a backup and then put them away. Leaving them plugged in is no different than if your computer had another drive inside it in the event of a cyber attack or a power surge. Manually hooking up the drive every day takes time that your employees could be using to make money for a time consuming task with a lot of easier solutions.

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) Devices

Network-attached storage (NAS) devices are a physical device you keep at your office location with a large amount of storage inside them. These are accessible as long as they are on the same network as other devices, so they are incredibly useful for sharing files inside an office and having all the computers in one location backing up to a single device. NAS share a lot of the same problems as external drives though. They are on the same network, so ransomware attacks will also have access to your NAS, and in the event of a power surge, natural disaster, or break-in, they are just as easily lost.

Online Backup Services

Online backup services like OneDrive or Google Drive make it easy to have a second copy of your data all the time, and to access your information from anywhere as long as you have internet access. While we recommend using these services, it should not be your only backup solution. The information on these cloud services can be deleted accidentally or by a malicious employee, which is the most common way to lose data. These large corporations also have no promise to retain your data, so if Microsoft or Google change their policy, you can easily lose all of your data without any recourse against them.

Offsite Cloud Storage

Offsite cloud backup services are where your long term backups should live, and are the best option to protect your business operations. These services keep multiple copies of your data, and are designed to store data in a secure manner for long periods of time. Our recommended configuration to make your business run smoother is to have all your computers syncing with OneDrive, then your OneDrive backs up every day to an offsite cloud storage facility. This is an easy to use solution for your employees that still adheres to the 3-2-1 standard for data protection.

How Should You Use This In Your Construction and Contracting Business?

Obviously backing up your data is incredibly important for your business's well being. It allows you to minimize downtime, avoid doing time-consuming tasks again, and meet your deadlines. You are busy with a million things already though, so if you want to quickly protect your business, you can contact us to outsource not only your recovery services, but also the unique needs of your business. We work with construction and contracting companies here in Kansas City, and we offer managed it services tailored to what your business needs most.