The volume of data that businesses collect, store, and manage is growing at an astounding rate. IDC estimates that by 2020, the digital universe will reach 44 zettabytes, which is equal to 44 trillion gigabytes. Not all that data will belong to small businesses, but given that SMBs make up more than 99 percent of all businesses in the U.S., a big chunk of it will.

The rapid growth of data makes backing it up more essential than ever before, and one problem that SMBs encounter is the rising cost of data backups. In part, that may be because SMBs keep their system backups longer than is necessary, which requires additional, expensive storage. So how long should SMBs keep system backups?

Backups Versus Archiving

SMB system backups are not the same as archives and should not be treated the same.

Before determining how long you need to keep a system backup, it’s necessary to understand that backups and archives are very different functions with very different purposes. The main difference is in immediacy. The simplest explanation is this:

A data or system backup is designed with rapid restoration in mind. A backup will be used within weeks or days. An archive is long-term storage. Archived data can be kept for months or years.

Data backups are any data that is essential to the operation of your business and what you access when you have a data loss situation. It could be caused by malicious software, natural disaster, or even a disgruntled employee. What’s important is not how it happens, but that some or all of your system data is lost. When that happens, a backup is used to restore that data.

An archive of system data is used for other issues, often to meet compliance requirements or to keep long-term records of data that isn’t essential to the current operation of the company. That data may need to be accessed in the event there is a question about a past interaction or transaction.

Backup Best Practices

It’s not enough to know the difference between archives and backups. You also need to understand and practice some backup best practices to ensure that your business is properly protected if something causes a data loss. That includes knowing how long to keep your system backups and when to archive all or parts of those backups.

Unfortunately, there is no single prescription for all SMBs. Instead, knowing when to move something from backup to archive status is a function of the business.  What compliance regulations control your archiving policies? How important is it for you to maintain storage for customer records from 10 years ago? These are questions that each SMB will answer differently.

What shouldn’t be vastly different, however, is the frequency of backup and the length of time that data is kept. As a general rule of thumb, SMBs should perform full system backups at least one time per month, and incremental backups on a daily basis.  The full system backup ensures that a current copy of your IT system is always available. The incremental backups update changes that are made daily such as those created using software applications or email.

Two months of full system backup is usually a safe target for how long to keep the backup files. The most recent month, and the month before should be enough to ensure that you can quickly restore a clean copy of your system if there is a data loss, but it also gives you a buffer in case the loss was caused by malware that might have resided on your system for a while before it was found. That increases the chances that the older backup doesn’t contain the infection. After two months, those backups should be moved to your archives only if there is a pressing reason to keep them.

There is much more to backup and recovery than just how long you should keep your backups or when you should move files from backup to archive. Time frame is just a basis to start building a backup and recovery plan, but it is one that every SMB should understand.