Almost three million small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the UK are at ‘high risk’ of losing valuable commercial information by failing to back up their data or storing electronic copies in the same location as the original information, according to our new study.

• A quarter of UK small and medium-sized businesses are failing to backup company data
• One in three SMEs are storing backups in the same location as original data
• Less than a fifth of SMEs are observing the ‘30 mile data-recovery rule’

How do businesses back up their data?

• Beaming’s study, which was conducted by the research firm Opinium, revealed that a quarter (24%) of businesses with fewer than 250 people – the equivalent of 1.3 million UK companies – do not duplicate their company data, storing information on users’ computers or a single server only.
• Micro businesses are most likely to lose data to a single computer failure, with 24% of firms employing fewer than 10 people keeping only one copy of electronic information. Approximately one in six small (10-49 people) and medium (50-249 employees) were also guilty of this.
• One in three (29%) SMEs – some 1.7 million firms nationwide – admitted to keeping their backups on servers or storage devices located in the same facility as the original information. 14% of SMEs backup data to an external hard drive that is removed from the office each evening.

Sonia Blizzard, Managing Director of Beaming, comments: “It is concerning that, despite the introduction of the GDPR, millions of UK companies are failing to take data backup and storage issues seriously. More than half of UK SMEs appear to be playing fast and loose with company data at the moment and they could get severely punished as a result. Businesses that fail to back up their data or that store copies in the same location as the originals are at high risk of losing valuable company information to an IT failure, cyber-attack or a single catastrophic event such as fire or flood.”

“Making daily copies and removing them from the office can be a solution, however, it adds to the risk of information being lost or stolen. Large businesses have shown the way, with increasing numbers backing up their data in real-time to a remote data centre or colocation facility. Small and medium-sized businesses need to follow that lead to ensure that they retain access to their data in the event of a failure, attack or natural disaster, and remain compliant with GDPR and data protection rules.”

Less than a fifth of SMEs are observing the ‘30 mile data-recovery rule’

Beaming’s research revealed that just 17% of SMEs currently backup their data to facilities located 30 miles or more from their main business premises, the distance recommended by business continuity experts to limit the IT impact of natural disasters. Almost half of SMEs adhering to the ‘30 mile data-recovery rule’ are using third party cloud services and do not know where their data is held.

The study also revealed a small increase in the number of SMEs backing up company data to their own IT equipment located in a remote data centre or colocation facility. The proportion of SMEs using this approach increased slightly from 7% to 9% between 2018 and 2019, driven by increasing demand from 10 – 49 person firms.

We asked businesses “Where is your data backed up?”