Acceptable Backup Solutions for Law Firms

There are only a few acceptable forms of data backup for law firms and these days and many state bar associations are requiring an offsite backup solution in addition to an onsite backup. Below is a breakdown of some common backup methods that law firms should consider.

With secure offsite backup your firm data is backed up to cloud server automatically on a daily basis. Success is monitored daily as well. The entire process is automated and monitored following compliance standards since all data transfer between your office and the cloud is encrypted. Offsite backup is easy, it comes with a low monthly rate and it’s good for firms of all sizes. Finally, any decent IT company will offer offsite backup as a service.

Many small firms use traditional USB hard drives to backup their data and there are a few issues with this. A traditional mechanical hard drive will eventually die, so if you don’t have a backup of your backup you will eventually lose your backup data. A better solution is a flash drive backup. Flash memory is solid state with no moving parts. Many flash drives can withstand the washing machine, water and even high drops. Flash drives these days have a high storage capacity making it easy to backup all of your firm data.

Tape drive setups are for large firms who can swallow the financial investment for the tape drive and the tapes.  They also require someone to clean the drive regularly.  We have seen tape backups run successfully but when it’s time to restore data the tape does not read or the drive is not clean. There are many issues with tape drives. You only see tape drives in older setups or in situations where a firm may have massive amounts of data and by massive we’re talking multiple Terabytes. Tapes must be rotated and taken offsite on a regular basis.