The practise of producing and preserving copies of data that can be used to protect businesses against data loss is referred to as backup and recovery. Operational recovery is a term used to describe this process. The data from a backup is usually restored to its original location, or to a different location where it can be utilised in place of the lost or damaged data.

To protect against data loss due to primary hardware or software failure, a good backup copy is kept in a separate system or medium, such as tape, from the primary data.