Losing data is an inevitable situation when your business uses computers nearly every day, all day long. Data backup services are the easiest way to help protect a company’s digital property when used on an ongoing basis. Backing up daily to a cloud data backup service, or to a local backup system, is critical to business continuity. Yet, with so many instances of critical data loss, why do small and medium businesses not have a backup plan in place yet?

The Diffusion Group surveyed 1000 small businesses and asked them about their data loss, and data backup policies. Nearly 40% of businesses surveyed said they’re not backing up their data at all. Not daily. Not weekly. Not even monthly. Not at all.

Many businesses make a point of backing up their servers, which usually can contain centralized data that their company needs to run on an ongoing basis. While that’s definitely a good policy, nearly 60% of small and medium businesses store their data on laptops and desktop computers – which again, aren’t backed up.

What happens when a large amount of data is lost? Let’s say, for instance, there’s unfortunately a fire and many of the computers used are lost, and the data’s not recoverable. In those cases, 60% of businesses who suffer a massive data loss are out of business within 6 months. 72% are out of business within 24 months. That’s a short period of time, compared with the decades it takes to build up these small businesses.

With the low cost of backup media and cloud-based services, the small investment in backup solutions is well justified when you consider the consequences of not backing up your data.