Data loss has forced countless businesses to permanently close their doors. Statistics, in fact, show that seven out of 10 small businesses that experience a major data loss event go out of business within 12 months. You can protect your business from suffering the same fate, however, by leveraging continuous data protection. What is continuous data protection exactly, and how does it work?

What Is Continuous Data Protection?

Also known as real-time backup, continuous data protection is an automated backup solution. It’s designed to automatically back up your data whenever you modify or otherwise change your data.

Traditional backup systems typically operate at specific intervals. For example, you can configure a traditional backup system to automatically back up your data once every two days or once a week. During these intervals, it will create a copy of your data while saving the copy to your specified location. Continuous data protection uses a different method of operation. Rather than backing up your data during intervals, it will back up your data whenever you make a change to it.

How Continuous Data Protection Works

Continuous data protection works by constantly scanning your data for changes. Each time data is written to a storage device, it will change. Continuous data protection will spot these changes. Regardless of how much new data you write to the storage device, a new backup will be created. With continuous data protection, you’ll essentially have a new copy of your data after each change.

Benefits of Continuous Data Protection

When compared to traditional backup systems, continuous data protection offers a higher level of protection against data loss. The problem with traditional data backup systems is that they leave a window in which data loss can occur. As previously mentioned, most of them only create data backups during specific intervals. If you experience a data loss event before this interval — and you create new data shortly thereafter — you may lose some of the newly created data.

With continuous data protection, there is no window in which data loss can occur. Your data will be backed up each time you change it. Continuous data protection apps and services are designed to offer continuous protection against data loss. If you use data continuous data protection, you won’t have to worry about losing data. It will back up your data in real time whenever your data is changed.

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