Why You Need a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan

If you have never thought about having a backup and disaster recovery plan for your business data, then you need to ask yourself the following question: “Would my business be adversely affected if I lost all my data?”. If the answer is “Yes”, then you need to look at a cost-effective solution to this potential business-ending situation.

You may also be wondering what sort of circumstances may lead to the loss of all your business data. If you are unsure, then it is perhaps understandable why protecting your business data has not, until now, been a priority. Let’s have a look at the four most likely scenarios where, as a consequence, you may well find you are unable to access critical business data:

• Failure of your computer system’s hardware – companies who manufacture computer hardware may offer you a guarantee, but that guarantee only covers the cost of replacing the hardware, it doesn’t cover the cost of any data lost as a result of a malfunction or breakdown. No computer is 100% reliable, which means access to your data can’t be guaranteed if you don’t make provision for any computer hardware problems. When we talk about provision, we mean regularly backing up of your data with a totally secure managed service provider.
• Human error – no matter how hard we try, or how exceptional our staff are at their job, there is still no escaping the costly consequences of human error. The multi-million-dollar Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated on its approach to the planet simply because those who built the engines and those who programmed them to operate, accidentally used different units of measurement. Your company data can be deleted by accident more easily than you might imagine, and the input of the wrong data can be equally as disastrous. Putting in place effective quality assurance programmes can help, but backing up your data to safe, external storage on a regular basis can avoid all the negative results of human error.
• Mother nature – despite all the advances in modern technology, the weather still remains relatively unpredictable. Admittedly not every region in the world will suffer from hurricanes and tornados like Katrina and Harvey, but with a perceived increase in global warming, flooding is becoming increasingly common. While it is generally accepted that 80% of all businesses who suffer from a loss of access to data for more than five days will go out of business if they do not have a disaster data recovery plan in place, only 37% of small businesses have a formal disaster recovery plan.
• Ransomware – despite taking all possible precautions and having the tightest internet security in place, somehow computer systems are continually infiltrated by ransomware programs, usually resulting in data encryption and therefore loss of usable data. Ransomware programs can lie dormant within a system for months and are often undetectable owing to a lack of actionable content, which only becomes ‘lethal’ via a second simple security breach. Ransomware is now so insidious that it can be accidentally downloaded just by visiting a website, or opening an email, but without clicking on any additional links or attachments.

Not only do you need access to your business or company data 24/7/365, but in today’s Internet-driven world, so do many of today’s customers and clients. A failure to be able to access critical information at any moment in time can see customer and client relations disintegrate. Loyalty in today’s cutthroat business environment is rare, so it is even more important to make sure you give clients and customers no excuse to ‘jump ship’.

When it comes to creating and putting into place a cost-effective and failsafe data backup and recovery plan, you need the services of a reputable IT managed service company such as ours here at Sedmi Odjel. As a well-established and highly respected managed service company, our reach has become global and we continue to expand, with our current objective being to become the leading provider of managed services in Europe. To find out more about disaster data recovery plans and our other managed services, please get in touch, either by email, or give us a call.