Strategies
Brace yourselves! The 2019 Atlantic storm season is here. Does your business have a disaster recovery plan in place when catastrophe strikes?
What would you do if you suddenly lost access to critical documents, applications, and existing data needed for day-to-day functionality? There’s a good chance your business will face significant problems like financial loss, inoperability and possible compliance issues.
Having a disaster recovery plan in place can mitigate these problems because it provides your staff with instructions on what to do after a significant and unplanned incident occurs. You’ll reap the benefits of reducing overall downtime and getting your business up and running again following a unplanned event.
Disaster Recovery Plans and Why You Need One For Your Business
Regardless of where you’re located, the fact remains that the world is unpredictable and disaster can strike at any time. Whether it’s a hurricane, fire, hacker, or zombie apocalypse, having insurance to protect against financial losses does not replace the valuable data and applications within your network and data center that allows your business to operate. Plan ahead and create a disaster recovery plan to protect and restore important data in the event that it is lost. Here are five scenarios that will strike your business where it hurts the most without a disaster recovery plan in place:
Cyber Crimes
Malware. Hackers. Phishing. They’re on the rise and unfortunately, most businesses are affected at some point or another. These vulnerabilities hold your data hostage and halt business operations causing you to lose out financially and operationally. The Ponemon Institute reports that the average total cost of data breach in 2018 was $3.86 million. While the financial impact may be more minimal to multi-billion dollar grossing corporations, a breach of this sort will have a much more negative impact on smaller businesses. Your plan should detail the steps to follow and recover from a cyber crime breach to ensure the safety and accessibility of your data.
Customer Service
Customers come first and they are always right. When businesses shut down or have prolonged disruption to service, what happens next? If resuming operations takes long enough, you risk losing your customer to your competitor. The faster you get back into action, the happier your customers will be. Disaster recovery plans provide your staff with the steps to take so your customers receive the service they expect from you.
Human Errors
We’re human and we all make mistakes, albeit costly ones without a disaster recovery plan in place. No one is perfect, but when you forget to hit “save” or documents are accidentally deleted it leads to significant losses. Providing your staff with the right training reduces human errors. Keep your business safe from human error data loss and back-up regularly for the most accurate version of your data.
Hardware Failure
Lights out! A power surge or some other unplanned incident just happened. What happens when your hardware fails and all of your company’s data goes with it? Protecting your hardware with surge protectors or state-of-the-art cooling systems doesn’t equate to protecting your data. Remember to schedule regular data back-up so you have the most up-to-date information. Additional layers of protection such as a cloud-based solution or colocation data center will also help since the likelihood of both locations being struck at the same time is rare (although not impossible). Your disaster recovery plan should also include these steps in the event that potential data loss occurs.
Natural Disasters
It can be a cruel world out there and sometimes, Mother Nature just isn’t having it. Storms, earthquakes and floods can do irreparable damage and it’s difficult to resume normal business operations without a disaster recovery plan. In the worst case scenario, your business’ future is in jeopardy. According to FEMA, 90% of small businesses fail within a year of a natural disaster occurrence unless they operations resume within five days after disaster strikes.
Not a single business is immune from losing access to their data and applications. Effective disaster recovery plans assure minimal and temporary losses so business operations are restored quickly and efficiently.
What do you have in place today to protect your business from a potential disasters?
If you have questions or would like to speak with our subject matter experts about putting disaster recovery plan in place, please click here to schedule a time to talk.
Tiffany Nguyen
Marketing Manager at Astreya
