Across Malaysian businesses today, there is still a common gap in understanding that could put companies at risk.
It is not unusual to walk into an office and hear someone confidently say, “Don’t worry, we have backups, that means our disaster recovery plan is sorted.”
This confusion is particularly concerning given Malaysia's unique risk landscape.
With the country experiencing everything from flash floods during monsoon seasons to power outages, and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats targeting businesses across ASEAN, the distinction between backups and disaster recovery has never been more critical.
Both concepts involve protecting your organisation's digital assets, but treating them as the same thing is like assuming that having a spare tyre makes you ready for a journey from KL to Kota Bharu.
One is a component, while the other is a comprehensive strategy that could determine whether your business survives the next major disruption.
This article takes a closer look at the difference between backups and disaster recovery, and why knowing how they work together could make all the difference when your business faces its next big challenge.
Think of backups as your digital insurance policy, they're designed to protect and restore individual data files or systems when things go wrong on a smaller scale.
No matter you're dealing with corrupted files, accidental deletions, hardware failures, or even ransomware attacks, backups serve as your safety net for retrieving lost or compromised data.
The core function of backups is pretty straightforward.
They create copies of your data, keep them somewhere safe, and let you bring them back when you need to. The focus is on preserving the data, not keeping everything running.
There are three main types of backups that organizations typically employ:
Full Backups create a complete copy of all selected data. While comprehensive, they require the most storage space and time to complete, making them suitable for weekly or monthly schedules.
Differential Backups capture all changes made since the last full backup. They strike a balance between storage efficiency and restoration speed, making them popular for daily backup routines, especially for businesses operating across multiple time zones in the region.
Incremental Backups only copy data that has changed since the last backup of any type. They're the most storage-efficient and fastest to complete, making them ideal for businesses with limited bandwidth – a consideration many Malaysian companies face when backing up to cloud services.
Disaster recovery operates on an entirely different scale and scope. While backups focus on protecting data, disaster recovery is about restoring entire IT operations and business processes after a catastrophic event.
In Malaysia, this could mean responding to devastating floods in Selangor or Pahang, ransomware attacks on businesses and government agencies, extended power outages during severe weather, or even disruptions like the MCO periods that restricted access to primary business locations.
Local businesses also need to consider factors such as cross-border operations with Singapore and other ASEAN neighbours, industry regulations like those set by Bank Negara Malaysia for financial institutions, and connectivity challenges that can affect East–West Malaysia.
Disaster recovery is essentially a comprehensive strategy that answers critical questions:
How quickly can we get back to normal operations?
How much data loss can we tolerate?
What alternative systems and processes will keep us running while we recover?
Two key metrics define every disaster recovery plan:
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) represents the maximum amount of time your organisation can afford to be down before the impact becomes unacceptable. For a Malaysian e-commerce platform during major sales events like 11.11 or 12.12, this might be minutes. For a small accounting firm in Ipoh, it might be hours or even a day.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) defines the maximum amount of data loss your organisation can tolerate. This is particularly crucial for Malaysian businesses handling sensitive customer data under PDPA requirements, or financial institutions that must comply with Bank Negara's stringent data protection standards.
At the end of the day, RTO and RPO are less about technology and more about business: how much risk you’ll tolerate, and how much you’ll pay to keep it under control.
To understand the fundamental difference, imagine your business as a laptop. Backups are like saving copies of your important files—documents, spreadsheets, and photos—onto an external hard drive or the cloud. If one file gets corrupted or accidentally deleted, you can restore it from the copy.
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, is like having another laptop set up and ready to go. It already has your operating system, software, settings, and synced files in place. So if your main laptop suddenly dies from a hardware failure or a coffee spill, you can pick up the spare and continue working without major downtime.
The distinction boils down to scope:
Backups help you recover individual files, databases, or systems. Disaster recovery helps you recover your ability to conduct business.
Here's where the relationship becomes clear: you cannot have an effective disaster recovery plan without reliable, tested backups.
Backups provide the raw materials – the data – that disaster recovery plans use to rebuild operations.
However, having backups doesn't automatically mean you have disaster recovery capabilities.
Disaster recovery requires additional components: alternate infrastructure (perhaps utilising Malaysia's growing cloud services sector), documented procedures, tested communication plans, trained personnel, and most importantly, a coordinated strategy that brings all these elements together quickly and efficiently.
Consider this real scenario that affected many Malaysian businesses during the December 2021 floods: your Kota Bharu office is submerged, but you have good backups stored in the cloud.
With just backups, you might spend days or weeks finding alternate premises, procuring new hardware, restoring data, and getting operations running again.
With a proper disaster recovery plan, you could have had critical operations running from your Penang branch or through cloud infrastructure within hours, keeping your business serving customers and maintaining cash flow throughout the crisis.
The question isn't whether you need backups or disaster recovery – every organization needs reliable backups.
The question is whether you also need formal disaster recovery capabilities.
Backups are non-negotiable for any Malaysian business that stores digital information, regardless of size. They protect against the most common data loss scenarios and provide peace of mind for relatively modest investment. With improving internet infrastructure and competitive cloud services available locally, implementing robust backup solutions has become more accessible for businesses across Malaysia.
Disaster recovery becomes essential when you consider the true cost of extended downtime in the Malaysian business environment. Consider these questions: What would happen if your systems were unavailable during Hari Raya online shopping peaks? Could your business survive being offline during the crucial year-end period? If you're a logistics company, what would extended downtime mean during major sale seasons when e-commerce volumes spike?
For many Malaysian businesses, especially those in competitive sectors like retail, manufacturing, or financial services, the answer is clear: extended downtime means lost revenue, damaged customer relationships, and potentially losing market share to competitors who remained operational.
The decision often comes down to a simple calculation: Is the cost of implementing disaster recovery less than the potential cost of extended downtime?
For many organizations, especially those dependent on digital operations, the answer is clearly yes.
Understanding the difference between backups and disaster recovery is crucial for Malaysian business leaders making informed decisions about protecting their organisations.
Backups are your foundation. They are essential for data protection and recovery from common issues.
Disaster recovery is your comprehensive strategy. It is necessary for maintaining business operations when major disruptions occur, whether from natural disasters, cyber threats, or other crises that are becoming increasingly common in our region.
The most successful Malaysian businesses build resilience by combining both. They use reliable backups to protect against data loss and build upon that foundation with disaster recovery planning to ensure business continuity during disruptions.
In Malaysia’s fast-moving business landscape, challenges can appear overnight. Having reliable backups and a tested disaster recovery plan turns preparation into a competitive advantage.
Remember: hoping for the best is not a strategy. Whether you’re setting up your first backup or strengthening your disaster recovery, the best time to act is now, before disruption strikes.
Every business is different, but the need for resilience is the same. At AXO Technologies, we deliver IT solutions that cover everything from everyday backups to full disaster recovery for Malaysian businesses.
Contact us now to explore how we can help safeguard your business data.
