Disaster Recovery Doesn’t Have to be Scary
Nearly 20% of small and mid-sized businesses will suffer a disaster in the next five years. Disaster recovery planning is critical! Those disasters can be natural or human-made. And downtime from a catastrophe is what kills a company. Businesses that lose access to their data for more than just ten days are likely to file for bankruptcy within the year. That is a staggering and scary statistic.
Key Questions about Disaster Recovery
It’s not so scary if you know what steps to take. If you want to backup your data and services and recover them quickly, here are a few key things you need to know:
- Where is your data stored and what services are you using?
- Which data and services absolutely must be online first?
- How long can you go without critical and noncritical data and services?
- How much does downtime cost you?
Once you have answers to all of these questions, you’ll be able to determine how to protect and restore all your data and services and do so in the most efficient, priority-first order.
Side Benefits
One big bonus of going through this process is dusting the cobwebs off idle or underutilized resources, such as servers, and retiring or put them to better use. Asking these questions and evaluating things from the perspective of backup and disaster recovery will help you consolidate servers, prioritize, and organize data and applications. It will also streamline your process and procedures.
We also recommend reading through the Ready.gov information on IT Disaster Recovery and their guidance on Business Continuity Planning. In 2020, businesses cannot afford to ignore planning for certain business crippling events. There are too many solutions that make your workforce mobile.
If you’re still a bit squeamish when it comes to improving your disaster recovery situation, you don’t have to go it alone. BEI offers self-paced BEI offers self-paced Risk Assessments and policy templates to begin tackling your business continuity planning. We have a Disaster Recovery Plan Template you can fill out and integrate into your business. We also offer Gap Assessments of current policies, procedures, and technical controls that you can customize around your goals. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you gain back complete confidence, boost efficiency, and ensure business continuity.