IT Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Do you have an IT disaster recovery plan in place?
Always have a backup plan
When you set up your business, it is easy to overlook planning for a crisis. It could seem like a crisis or disaster is pretty unlikely to happen. You’ll probably just want to focus on your day-to-day work or trying to grow instead. But just like you take out contents insurance for your business to protect equipment from something like theft or accidents, you need to have some kind of plan for anything that might affect your IT. That is where IT disaster recovery comes in.
What is IT disaster recovery?
IT disaster recovery refers to a set of policies, tools and measures put into place to allow the recovery and continuation of a business that suffers from a disaster. While they are quite rare, this could include natural disasters like earthquakes, flooding or fires. These incidents could damage properties containing physical servers that are used for storing essential business information. It could also damage essential equipment that could delay recovery even further. This would make a bad situation even worse for business owners!
Cyberattacks or business disruptions due to unforeseen events like COVID-19 could also count as disasters. These situations would require emergency recovery to restore the vital infrastructure of an organisation to normal working conditions. While disasters don’t seem likely to happen, flooding has unfortunately affected a lot of businesses over the last year. Storm Dennis was one of the most intense extratropical cyclones ever recorded in 2020. It left behind £225m worth of damage that wasn’t just to homes, but to businesses too.
How does disaster recovery work?
The disaster recovery process works by backing up essential data in a separate site and using it to restore any files that were lost or damaged in the disaster. Sometimes, servers are damaged because of a natural disaster or cyberattack. In this scenaro, businesses will be able to access the backed up files and restore lost data. The goal is to keep business data secure to allow operations to continue as quickly as possible. This will prevent unnecessary downtime and loss of trade.
Who is disaster recovery for?
Disaster recovery is essential for every business that uses data. However, having an IT disaster recovery plan in place is particularly important for small businesses. This is because large, established organisations will naturally have more security measures in place to prevent disasters in the first place. They will also have more resources, funds and personnel to recover lost data should they face an emergency.
Small businesses will be more susceptible to events like cyberattacks and data breaches in the first place. And once the event happens, it will be harder for them to quickly get back on their feet, retain their customers and prevent the loss of their company’s reputation. For this reason, having an IT disaster recovery plan in place to ensure business continuity is crucial for small businesses.
The benefits of IT disaster recovery as a service
Disaster recovery team
By outsourcing your IT services you can have a disaster recovery team on hand to provide you with managed IT backup. What this means is that you have trained IT professionals on hand if needed. In the event of a disaster, this team will know which steps to take and how to quickly and effectively restore your crucial data. Your disaster recovery team will react to any further complications that may arise and give you real-time updates of their progress.
Flexibility and scalability
You have the option to scale up or scale down the scope of your disaster recovery measures depending on the size of your business. This means that you will only be paying for the solutions that you’ll actually need in case of a disaster. You can discuss the specific type of recovery service you need with your disaster recovery team. They will help to optimise your plan and make sure you’ve chosen the most cost-effective option.
Better security
Planning for IT disasters means taking all sorts of measures to prevent any events that can lead to downtime for a business. This may include regularly updating firewall and antivirus software. It could also mean implementing further security measures such as two-factor authentication and encryption. As part of the disaster recovery service, your overall security will be bolstered to prevent events such as cyberattacks from damaging your business. This means that companies can benefit from better overall security regardless of whether or not they suffer a disaster or not.
Your next steps in disaster recovery planning
When it comes to planning for a crisis or disaster, it is something that shouldn’t be put off. That is because a disaster could happen at any point. Many scenarios that involve having to use a disaster recovery plan couldn’t be anticipated and so the risk in putting it off is that you will find yourself needing it when it is too late. Furthermore, by having a plan in place ready to use you could actually save costs if it is ever needed.
Plan IT Support is an experienced IT support company that operates across Essex and London. Our team of knowledgeable and friendly IT technicians will help you to cover all aspects of IT disaster recovery solutions. Should you find yourself in an emergency, regardless of the cause, we’ll be on hand to help you return your business to normal as quickly as possible.