Backups are like insurance—you hope you never need them, but when disaster strikes, they can be the difference between a quick recovery and catastrophic data loss. Unfortunately, many businesses discover too late that their backup strategy wasn’t as strong as they thought.

At CloudCore IT Solutions, we’ve helped countless businesses recover from outages, ransomware, and hardware failures—and we’ve seen the same mistakes come up again and again. Here are the top 5 backup mistakes businesses make—and how to fix them.

1️⃣ Relying on a Single Backup

One copy isn’t enough. If your only backup is corrupted, stolen, or encrypted in a ransomware attack, you’re out of luck.

Fix: Follow the 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies of your data, on 2 different media types, with 1 stored off-site (or in the cloud).

2️⃣ Not Testing Restores

A backup is worthless if you can’t restore it. Too often, businesses run backups for years without ever testing them—only to find out they don’t work when disaster strikes.

Fix: Schedule regular test restores to confirm your backups are complete, accessible, and reliable.

3️⃣ Backing Up Too Infrequently

Weekly or monthly backups leave huge gaps in your data. If you lose a week’s worth of work, the productivity and financial hit can be severe.

Fix: Increase backup frequency. For most businesses, daily—or even hourly—backups for critical systems is best practice.

4️⃣ Storing Backups in the Same Location

If your backups live on the same server or in the same building as your production data, a fire, flood, or theft could wipe out everything.

Fix: Use off-site or cloud-based backups to ensure redundancy, no matter what happens at your primary location.

5️⃣ Overlooking Security for Backups

Backups are a prime target for cybercriminals. If they’re unencrypted or accessible without proper protections, they could be compromised just like your live data.

Fix: Encrypt all backups, restrict access with role-based permissions, and protect them with MFA.

✅ Protect Your Business With CloudCore

At CloudCore IT Solutions, we design and manage backup strategies that actually work. As a veteran-owned company with four generations of military service, we understand the importance of discipline, readiness, and resilience. From automated off-site backups to full disaster recovery plans, we make sure your data is always safe—and always recoverable.