It’s Almost Midnight, Do You Know Where Your Construction Data Is?

Trimble Viewpoint Network Survey Shows Construction Data Backups and Data Security are Top of Mind

Construction Data Backups: By the Numbers

At Trimble Viewpoint, we recently surveyed our own clients via our Network user community to find out how they were currently addressing data backups. Here’s a look at the results:

1. How is Your Construction Data Backed Up?

• 45.5% Our data backups are handled by in-house IT professionals
• 24.3% Our data backups are handled through a third party It company
• 13.6% Our data backups are done automatically via a connected platform
• 13.6% Unsure
• 3.0% Our data backups occur within individual software programs

While the nearly 14% of contractors who have moved to connected, cloud-based solutions to better protect their data might seem like a small number, it is a rapidly growing number, and many contractors are either preparing to move or transitioning soon. Moving to the cloud is not an overnight process, but as those that have moved will likely tell you, the benefits far outweigh remaining on on-premise systems.

“It’s only a matter of time before contractors who are not willing to move to the cloud run into a data breach or hardware malfunction and lose critical data,” said Grant Mongin, business systems analyst and trainer with Minnesota-based RJM Construction. “Unfortunately a disaster is the typical catalyst for construction businesses to make the change.”

2. How Often is Your Construction Data Backed Up?

• 39.4% Unsure
• 32.6% Once a Day
• 22.7% Hourly/Automatically
• 4.5% Once a Week
• 0.8% Once a Month

It’s good to see that backups being done only once per week or month seem to be a thing of the past. Yet, even once-a-day backups done via on-premise systems can leave plenty of room for exploitation. Even missing a day’s worth of data and project information can cause project delays and cost companies tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity.

What is more revealing is the number of respondents that were unsure. Now, this could be reflective of non-IT end users not being aware of how data is backed up in their organization, but it also speaks to the need for more transparency across all teams so that everyone knows the plan should a data incident occur.

3. Have you or your organization ever experienced a delay or downtime due to technical issues and lack of available business data?

• 56.8% No
• 27.2% Unsure
• 16.0% Yes

4. Has your company experienced a data breach or cybersecurity issue in the past 24 months?

• 71.2% No
• 15.9% Unsure
• 9.9% Yes, but data was backed up and we were able to continue business operations
• 3.0% Yes, and business was stalled due to lack of data backups

The numbers here clearly show that data disruptions do occur, with nearly 13% of respondents acknowledging a cyber attack or data breach attempt within the past two years. Here’s what a few of our respondents said when we asked for more details into some of these disruptions:

• “A virus got into the company computers and shut us down for a full day. It was very expensive to hire another IT company to help us get right again.”
• “Hacked last year. It took several days to recover.”
• “Sometimes the server will ‘go down’ and we will not be able to log into anything on our network.”
• “We had ransomware in our system. Very minor, but we were down a day or so.”
• “We had a water line break and it rained on our servers. Our backups saved us, within a day our network vendor had brought a temp server and restored our servers.”

5. What is the MOST important data that needs to be backed up?

• 79.5% HR/Employee Data
• 78.0% Job Cost or Project Financial Data
• 60.6% Purchasing/Invoice/Vendor Data
• 48.5% Project Planning/Execution Data
• 8.3% Other Data

It rings true, if systems go down for any extended period of time, important business processes like paying employees, paying bills, getting paid for work, job progress and financial accountability all become real-time headaches.

For those that have gone through these scenarios, they can attest at just how cumbersome they are to navigate. That’s why regularly backed up data is vital to construction business continuity.