Do Los Angeles Financial Planners Need Image Based Backups?

For Los Angeles financial planners, reliable and secure backup methods are an industry mandate. Regulatory bodies require that all company and client records be copied and stored at a secure remote location and retrieved whenever reviews are needed.

There are many data preservation methods that allow RIAs to remain compliant, but one that’s increasing in popularity is image based backups.

A copy of the computer’s operating system and all its data, including programs and applications, are saved in a single file called an image, making it easier to migrate to new hardware and recover from a system failure without losing any information.

Image based backups create large files and use a lot of bandwidth when transferred to the cloud. However, financial planners who use them for data security say that they perform very well.

The Advantages

Fast system recovery - In the financial services industry, time is indeed money. So the faster a business gets back online, the sooner it can resume serving clients and being profitable. With image based backups you can swiftly restore single files or entire servers to the same state they were in before disaster struck. Unlike file-based restoration, you don’t rebuild the entire system piecemeal and spend ages getting all the components working together again.
Remote data restoration - IT administrators can accomplish file-level or full-system restorations from geographically distant backup servers. No on-site visits are necessary, which saves both time and money and gets the company servers back online quickly.
Bare-metal restore functionality - When a system backup is image based, it can be restored to new or existing hardware. This is different from local disk image restore, which requires the disk image copy and the restoration software to be on the same computer. This way a damaged hardware system can be easily “transplanted” onto one that is properly functioning.

Other benefits include the ability to restore servers remotely across WANs and LANs, save backup images to different media, and it supports encryption.

Bottom Line

When a data disaster hits, financial planners using file-based restoration software have a challenge fitting all the pieces back together. They also have to reinstall the operating system, programs, and applications.

With image based backups, everything is restored automatically to the state it was in before disaster struck. This simple yet powerful feature gets the business back up and running more quickly.

Has your office tried image based backup technology? If not, do you feel it could be an asset in your business continuity strategy? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments box below.

And to follow-through on the tips introduced in this short article, be sure to download your free guide, Investing in High Net Worth Clients: The LA Investment Advisor's Guide to Using Technology to Manage and Grow Your Firm.