How Your Business Survival Depends On Disaster Recovery.

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1 How Your Business Survival Depends On Disaster Recovery 1

2 Business continuity and disaster recovery, known as BCDR or BC/DR, are essential for ensuring the survival of your business in the event of remote desktop data loss. Business continuity refers to the ability to keep all important operations going without interruption, and a recovery plan is what you implement to retrieve vital company information. Disaster can strike at any time in the form of a storm, flood, fire, server failure, burglary or cyber-attack. It s estimated that 80 percent of companies without a plan in place to deal with these unexpected circumstances go out of business. That s why you need to get your executives and IT technicians together now to map out a BCDR strategy that will keep things running. Loss of Confidential Data Without Disaster Recovery Having any kind of data stored on your company s network means that there s a risk of it being lost or stolen at some point. Recovery planning is your way of managing that risk. At any given time, you may be storing: Customer and vendor contact information Billing profiles Price quotes Standing purchase orders or recurring orders Tax information Credit card numbers Customer accounts 2

3 The sensitive nature of this information requires secure data centers (link) both on company premises and with any third-party backup solutions (link) that you choose. It s important to have both types of backup in place. Using only onsite storage or relying on a single remote server means that, if the hardware fails or becomes damaged, years of essential data could disappear in a matter of seconds. Although there s no way to ensure that you ll never lose any stored information at all, having a comprehensive recovery plan in place minimizes the chances of you losing so much that you re no longer able to operate your business. Cost of Downtime Rapid retrieval of data is critical to business continuity. Statistics clearly show the consequences suffered by businesses that lose access to data for extended periods of time: 87% of companies that lose access for more than a week go out of business in one year. When data is unavailable for ten days or more, the number jumps to 93 percent. 25% of daily revenue is lost in the first six days without data access. After two weeks, 40 percent is lost. Using only onsite storage or relying on a single remote server means that, if the hardware fails or becomes damaged, years of essential data could disappear... 53% of companies suffer serious loss of revenue after less than an hour of downtime. These numbers highlight the importance of being able to recover data as quickly as possible. Even if you can t fix the initial cause of data loss immediately, you must keep on top of daily tasks and stay in touch with customers while a normal working environment is being restored. Loss of Clients Data loss can threaten your company s ability to communicate with its customers. Losing touch makes it impossible to issue alerts regarding potential delays in order processing, shipping, and other critical operations. The longer you re out of contact, the less reliable your business appears. And customers will start to go to competitors to look for better service. 3

4 A solid business continuity plan allows you to stay in contact with customers throughout the recovery process. Set up a helpline to field questions, and send out regular updates to let people know when they can expect full functionality to resume. A helpline like this is more important when data loss is due to hacking. Cyber-attacks can result in loss of trust between consumers and businesses, but being transparent about how you re handling the situation helps mitigate the potential damage to your reputation. Loss of Entire Business If you re unable to retrieve information and suffer lengthy downtime as a result, dissatisfied customers may terminate their relationships with you and also spread the word to others about their negative experiences. The bad reviews you get as the result of poor disaster recovery planning could haunt your business for years. Remember: 70 percent of business go under after a major data loss. Don t be a statistic! Backup Options When putting together a BCDR plan, you have several choices for backing up your data: External media, such as hard drives and flash drives Onsite servers Remote cloud servers Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices 4

5 Each option has its advantages, but what they all have in common is that the underlying hardware is subject to damage or destruction. Choose several different locations, and set up a schedule of backups that saves the most recent changes in data at regular intervals. This redundancy ensures that you ll always have at least one source from which to retrieve your data. For speed, NAS devices may be your best choice. However, if your company s building is destroyed by a natural disaster, storing data in the cloud allows you to access it from mobile devices, somewhat like a remote desktop, and continue doing business as usual until you get settled in a new location. Occasional testing of backups must be part of any BCDR plan. According to the 2012 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey by Symantec, 26 percent of the business said they had a plan in place, but only 21% were actually confident they could use their backups to recover data. Plan practice runs of your recovery procedure so that you re not part of the other 82 percent.? Did you know every week 140,000 hard drives crash in the United States? itispivotal.com Since you never know when or what type of a disaster may strike, it pays to have insurance in the form of a disaster recovery plan. Whichever plan you choose to make sure it incorporates multiple data storage options, ensures the proper amount of redundancy, and utilizes backup solutions that are overseen by teams of experienced IT professionals. When all of the critical assets of your business are protected, you can offer employees and customers the assurance that your company will always be in operation no matter what happens. Call today to secure your company s future! 26 Broadway North Haven, CT P: F: info@itgct.com 5