We’ve all been there. A computer crashes, hard drive is damaged, and somehow important files are missing. It’s a maddening experience. But if you’re a business owner, data loss can be devastating. In fact, Business Continuity Statistics state that when businesses lose all data, 43% remain closed, and 29% will close within the next two years. Don’t let this happen to you! Disaster recovery services protect your data against natural disasters such as fire, flood, or earthquake, and against man-made whether accidental or malicious.
A good provider of disaster recovery services creates a business continuity plan, which evaluates a business’ risk for internal and external threats and data loss. He will then implement three types of measures to protect against damage. Preventative measures keep disastrous events from occurring in the first place. Detective measures are aimed at finding and stopping disastrous events. Finally, corrective measures aim to fix the effects of the disaster once it has occurred.
First a disaster recovery specialist will do a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) in which he looks at the different functions of a company and rates them as critical and non-critical. Critical functions are those which are vital to the business’ functioning or those which are deemed critical by law. For each of these critical functions, he then determines the company’s Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) The RPO determines the maximum amount of time required to find the first character of data in storage. The RTO is the maximum amount of time data can be lost before serious business damage occurs.
Next, he determines the steps needed to restore critical business operations. Different steps may be needed for different types of disasters. Disaster recovery services will design protocols for fire, flood, earthquake, power loss, viruses, theft, cyber terrorism, and war, among others. A good business continuity plan has several different scenarios that dictate how to deal with various catastrophes, and these various plans are then given test runs. Disaster recovery services will continue to work with a company to make sure the business continuity plan stays in place and evolves to meet the company’s needs. This involves updating the company manual and regular tests of the policies and organizational procedures employed in emergency situations. In the realm of computers, it also involves checking for viruses, and ensuring that all hardware, applications, and data are running smoothly.
Don’t leave your business unprotected. Contact an expert in disaster recovery services to set a business continuity plan in place. Just like insurance, you hope you won’t ever need it, but if you do, you’ll be glad it’s there.
