Not Sure if Your Back-Up Methods Are Reliable Enough?
Even if your small-to-midsize business isn’t in a hurricane zone, an earthquake-prone area, or under threat of tornados, brush fires or other natural disasters, you may still get that occasional nagging concern that your data back-up methods may not be quite comprehensive enough. (If your business location is at risk for any of these natural disasters, that worry is probably keeping you awake at night!)
So how do you know for sure that your back-up and disaster recovery plans are enough?
It’s a reasonable question, considering that up to 90 percent of companies that lose their data for more than one week due to a disaster go out of businesses within a year.
To answer the question and resolve your worries, we offer the following 4 considerations to help you assess your disaster recovery plan.
- Is Your Business at Risk from a Disaster?
Answer: Yes. Simply put, a disaster is so much more than Mother Nature’s wrath. Disasters encompass typical power outages, unexpected patches or updates, viruses and malware.
Acronis, working with the Ponemon Institute, recently found that 86 percent of companies surveyed experienced one or more instances of system downtime in the previous 12 months. Those downtimes lasted 2.2 days on the average, and cost each business an average of $366,363 a year.
The catastrophe most businesses experience is not fire, flood or earthquake, but rather something much more insidious—malware. (Timesavers International) In fact, onsite disasters such as a fire or explosion were a factor in only 26 percent of system down times, while natural disasters, such as earthquakes, were a factor in only 10 percent. This compares to 60 percent caused by human error, 56 percent by unexpected updates and patches, 44 percent by server room environment issues and 29 percent by power outages. (CRN)
- Is Your Data Backed Up Automatically?
A data back-up is a simple function of copying files to another location. Many companies conduct this back-up through cloud-hosted backup solutions, although secondary computers and tape backups are also used. Backups allow data to be easily accessed and restored in the case of human error (“I accidentally deleted a file from the server!”), theft, or equipment issues like a crashed hard drive.
When automated so that backups occur regularly (at least once daily) and run in the background, this system works well and is an important security measure for minor day-to-day data mishaps.
- Do You Have a Disaster Recovery Plan?
If you’re thinking, “Well, my data gets backed up…” you should know that a back-up is not disaster recovery. Your business needs both. Should your company’s entire system go down, for any reason, a simple backup is an unreliable and inefficient solution for getting back online. Gartner has reporter that 50 percent of all tape backups fail to restore(source).
Disaster recovery solutions provide a complete mirror image of all disk drives and servers, allowing a company to continue operations soon after the disaster by transferring operations onto the mirror-image system. Meanwhile, IT can focus on repairing the original network.
4. Does Your Business Require Full Data Recovery within a Specific Timeframe?
If your product or service is time-sensitive, critical, or otherwise essential (such as a 911 operator, medical supplies provider, pharmacy, financial institution, etc.), or if you manage secure or otherwise sensitive data, your company may have more urgent and detailed recovery requirements than other businesses. This may translate to disaster recovery services that deliver full data recovery in minutes rather than hours. For many businesses, this urgency is a necessity.
Whether your business needs full data recovery in minutes, hours or days, data protection technology providers offer a wide range of solutions to secure critical data and make it easily accessible to you in the face of a disaster or unexpected event.