Business can be difficult when everything goes right, but when disaster strikes, serious issues arise that need to be answered fast and if you don’t have a business continuity plan in place, your business will be in peril. It doesn’t matter what you do, if circumstances decide that your business needs to shut down, having a disaster recovery policy in place as a part of a larger continuity plan, will do more than you think to save your business. 

Consider the Risks

Having a business continuity plan is to consider the risks your business is likely to face. Some of them have to do with your geographical location and the types of disasters that you could legitimately face, some have to do with operational downtime and the causes of that, but regardless of what risks your company could potentially face, having a plan to circumvent those potential risks is at the core of your continuity strategy. 

When we talk about disaster recovery, we are talking about instances that stop your business’ ability to function. Sure they could be flood, fire, or weather, but they could just as easily be computer component or utility failure. Most businesses were not ready for the COVID-19 pandemic, which turned out to be a huge disaster for a lot of businesses. The businesses that were able to quickly pivot to deal with the problems of state-sponsored quarantine or the lingering uncertainty of operations in response to the global pandemic, were the businesses that thrived over the past couple of years. 

So while you can’t rightly have a response to every problem, covering your bases to help maintain your business’ ability to operate is essential to overcoming these issues. Let’s take a look at some variables your disaster recovery strategy needs to ensure that digital assets are protected.

Data Backup and Recovery

The truth is that any business that is unable to recover data when struck by a data disaster will likely lose customers. This can happen from malware attack, component failure, or any natural disaster caused by weather. The best way to mitigate this scenario and protect your business’ data is to have a reliable, redundant backup of all files and applications. Not only should you keep an onsite backup, you need a solution to the fact that many times, that backup would be compromised due to the disaster. A cloud-hosted backup that is incrementally updated makes the most sense for almost every organization. 

Think about it, a data backup service can effectively keep your whole organization from descending into chaos. Think about all the negative circumstances there are surrounding the compromise of people’s personal and financial information, and a data backup and recovery service begins to pay for itself. Here are a few scenarios:

• Ransomware attack - Your business gets hit with one of the millions of ransomware attacks that hackers are disseminating and your files are locked down. With a timely backup, you can restore your systems rather than paying a huge ransom to get your files back. There’s no telling if you would even get them back, either, a whole other can of worms that you don’t want to face. 
• Natural disasters - Regardless of where your business is, disasters come in many forms. If you are knocked out of commission because of a natural disaster, ensuring all your operational data is safe in an offsite data center, it makes it easier to make the important moves necessary to get your business back up and running.
• Human error or sabotage - End users are the cause of 88 percent of all data breaches. With that knowledge, understanding your data is protected against employee mistakes, negligence, or sabotage makes dealing with an internal data breach that much easier. 

Those are just three examples where disaster recovery can save your bacon. Having the ability to restore your data and applications quickly in the face of a perilous situation not only provides peace of mind, it provides stability in situations that demand it. If you would like to talk to one of our security professionals at 415 IT about getting a backup system in place that is right for you, give us a call at (415) 295-4898 today.