Key Points
Help Your Clients Define “Critical Data” Using Plain Language
- Prioritize Critical Data: Identify and protect critical business data before backing up files, to prevent bloated recovery plans and wasted resources.
- Use Simple Definitions: Explain critical data in plain language, using information that keeps their business running, ensures compliance, and maintains customer trust.
- Categorize Data by Business Function: For relevance and efficiency, group data by department and not by just file type; label them as Critical, Important, or Non-essential.
- Ask Smart Questions to Assess Impact: Use intuitive prompts like “What would halt operations if lost?” to assess the operational and legal impact of data loss, then tabulate your findings.
- Visualize Data Priority: Use pie charts, bar graphs, and matrices to visualize which data is protected and what’s at risk.
- Review Data Classifications Yearly: Include annual reviews in QBRs to update data mappings, adjust SLAs, and stay aligned with evolving business needs.
Clients often back up their entire file catalog without prioritizing critical data, resulting in bloated recovery plans and additional overhead. Establishing backup priority improves fallback plans; however, non-IT counterparts often require guidance on determining which files are most important to prioritize over others.
Standardize critical data classification to streamline backups. This article explains how to define critical data for effective backup strategies.
Backup critical data first for organized data storage
Backup priority should be tailored to your client’s business needs. Consider these key components to methodically identify and store critical data.
Use a plain-language definition
Critical data includes the essential information that enables day-to-day business operations. Clients rely on these files and documents for ongoing stability, compliance, and consumer trust. That said, defining critical data can be a challenge for professionals managing a large clientele.
Here are common examples of critical data for major industries:
| Industry | Business-critical data |
| Healthcare | Patient records (Electronic Health Records / Electronic Medical Records), insurance claims, lab results, appointment schedules, and compliance logs |
| Finance | Transaction logs, audit trails, loan records, and account data |
| Retail | Inventory database, order log, supplier contacts, CRM, payment records, and employee payroll |
| Legal services | Client communications, court filings, case files, and billing records |
| Real estate | Listings, client contracts, legal disclosures, and property tax documents |
Categorize by business function
Certain businesses value certain data types more than others. This becomes more specific at the department level, so advise clients to interview stakeholders to accurately determine which files are most important.
- Interview department heads (for example, Sales, Finance, and Operations).
- Group important data types by division.
- Customer-facing (CRM records, order history)
- Financial (Payroll, invoicing)
- Operational (SOPs, internal templates)
- Compliance (Tax filings, legal contracts)
- Rank each data type as:
- Critical: Immediate business impact if lost
- Important: Operational inconvenience
- Non-essential: Archival or low-risk
Not only does this help simplify importance ranking, but it is also an essential step in managing multiple environments. Microsoft recommends building a proper data classification system to set security expectations and optimize data protection for a minimal attack surface.
Use mini business impact analysis (BIA) questions
Focus on retaining data that your client relies on every day for operational continuity. To do this, run through data loss scenarios to determine the impact and discuss general compliance needs. This lets you further refine your criteria, prioritizing critical data backup.
Ask clients:
- “If this data were lost, how disastrous would it be for productivity levels (1-10)?”
- “Would you face legal repercussions if this data were compromised?”
- “What do you need for verifying invoices and fulfilling contracts?”
For auditability, tabulate your findings like so:
| Business process | Data type | Operational impact |
| Invoicing | Account data | Critical |
| Customer support | Chat records | Important |
| Marketing | Old campaign assets | Non-essential |
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Run lightweight scripting for visibility (optional)
Automate folder checks to know how much storage space you’ll need to back up and restore critical data.
📌 Use Cases: Use this to tabulate critical data file sizes to anticipate cloud storage needs.
📌 Prerequisites: Administrative privileges, Windows 10/11 operating system
- Note all file paths that contain critical data.
- Press Win + R, type PowerShell, and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter.
- Run the following:
Get-ChildItem "<filePath>" -Recurse |
Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum |
Format-Table @{Name="TotalGB";Expression={[math]::Round($_.Sum / 1GB, 2)}}
Replace <filePath> with a directory that stores critical client data (e.g., C:\Client\CriticalData)
💡 Note: This PowerShell script helps calculate the total storage size of folders containing critical data. The result lets you estimate how much backup or cloud storage space will be required, making it easier to plan data protection and recovery strategies.
Visualize and communicate priority
Visualize critical data to make your client-facing reports more comprehensible and easier to understand. Consider using Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools such as NinjaOne to generate QBR-ready visuals directly from dashboards.
Use these popular visual tools:
- Pie charts: Show the distribution of data categories or device types, depending on your reporting setup..
- Bar graphs: Compare data volumes across different departments.
- Color-coded matrices: Visualize protection levels for each data type to manage risk levels effectively.
- QBR summaries: Measure performance and find service gaps.
Revisit annually
Finish your client presentation on critical data with a review checklist to track:
- Yearly data mappings
- Evolving business priorities that reclassify data types
- Adjusted SLAs for backup and recovery
- Accountability reviews
Annual updates align expectations, prepare clients for the next assessment, and build trust.
Best practices for retaining critical data with clients
| Component | Purpose and value |
| Plain-language explanation | Defines business-critical data without confusing the client with IT jargon |
| Functional categorization | Determines data importance based on how each department or function uses it daily |
| BIA-style prompting | Digs deeper and refines backup priority criteria |
| Optional scripting | Avoids manual labor and helps your team estimate backup size and costs |
| Visual summaries | Use charts or dashboards to present data importance at a glance. |
| Recurring review | Keeps data classification up-to-date and relevant to current business goals |
Critical data mapping workflow, simplified
Use this summarized workflow to streamline backup prioritization:
- Meet with the client to match business types to essential documents and files.
- Use plain language to define data impact and assign labels.
- Run PowerShell scripts to estimate the needed storage space.
- Base critical backup cadence with defined schedules and recovery goals.
- Store findings and data tables in versatile documentation platforms.
- Review data types annually to align with changing business priorities.
Enhance backup priority with customizable storage options
Defining critical data with clients aligns protective security measures with business goals. Agree on what data classifies as “critical”, probe deeper for comprehensive lists, automate storage forecasts, and regularly report on data classifications to keep strategies robust.
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