The pandemic forced Singapore companies to adapt to hybrid work arrangements. However, a majority of business leaders and employees have begun to see the benefits of this work arrangement and maintain the hybrid model. 

While many employees will continue to work remotely at least part of the time, a recent survey found that 39% of employees do not believe that their company fully supports long-term remote work, with access to company resources, tools, and data being cited as the key reasons for this belief.

It has never been more important for companies to provide employees with secure access to business and customer data, regardless of where they are working from. This makes it all the more surprising that only 27% of organisations use cloud-based methods to back up and access company data.

Data backup is an essential function of business operations, and failure to do so can have a ripple effect on the rest of the business. Businesses that rely on outdated forms of backup, such as external hard drives, can find themselves dealing with employee frustrations arising from access issues, potentially compromised data if physical hardware is removed from premises, or even data loss from hardware failure.

In total, a single outage caused by a ransomware attack can cost over S$100,000, a financial hit many SMBs would struggle to recover from. Here are four ways cloud-based backup solutions can prevent these mishaps from happening to your business.

One of the most common reasons for failure in any manual process is human error. For example, the use of individual hard drives for manual data storage and backup can create many points of failure as a result of human error, such as mishandling of backup hardware or accidental deletion by users.

When data is stored in the cloud, backups are done automatically at preset fixed intervals and do not rely on personnel to manually collect, organise, and store data.

Almost half of hybrid workers feel that they do not have access to the same tools and resources they do at the office when working from home. This is an even bigger challenge for companies who need employees to work on their personal devices or on mobile devices while on the move.

The use of a consolidated cloud-based data storage platform ensures that each member of the team is able to access business data, and operational information, regardless of the location.

In this highly connected age, there are still businesses that choose to rely on storage solutions such as physical hard drives due to their low costs and perceived ease of use. However, these devices require regular manual backups and are more prone to failure.

In contrast, storing and backing up data to the cloud gives business owners the assurance that their data will be instantly available and easy to access. Most, if not all, cloud storage platforms have security features such as encryption enabled, so business owners can feel assured that their data is safe.

The pandemic has reiterated the importance of maintaining a level of agility in business operations. Businesses have to be able to ramp up or scale down operations quickly based on pay-per-use charging models, allowing them to better manage costs.

Singtel Backup is designed to help you recover lost data easily and take your business back to full productivity.

From $1.50/user/mth, you can:

• Retain your business data for as long as necessary.
• Isolate and store your backup in a different environment to comply with disaster recovery requirements.
• Accelerate backup/restore performance by consolidating backups into a single data lake.