Business of Tech Corner – Disaster Recovery
Business of Tech Corner – Disaster Recovery
Business owners (and everyone else!) hope to never face their building burning down, a natural disaster, theft, or even ransomware locking away your files until you pay X dollar amount. However, if current events have taught us anything, it is that businesses and our precious data bits need to be prepared for any number of unprecedented situations. Its my hope that every IT professional recommends and implements a reliable and testable Disaster Recovery (DR) plan.
What is a DR Plan and Who Should Have One?
Essentially, a Disaster Recovery plan is exactly that – a plan to recover your businesses lifeblood in the event of a disaster or some other unforeseen circumstance. In the beginning Disaster Recovery plans started with scenarios such as a fire or catastrophic server hardware failure in your building. Having a DR plan in place allowed IT Professionals to have a clear path in restoring business operation as quickly and smoothly as possible.
The rise of ransomware has really brought the DR planning process back into the forefront of technologist’s minds over the past few years. This avenue of attack and socially-engineered phishing emails have really started to mature for all of the wrong people. Unfortunately, the days of a former Prince losing his fortune in an unfortunate set of circumstances- with you being the only one who can unlock his funds with a small donation are essentially over. Today criminals are much more sophisticated, posing as someone you know with relevant conversation to reel you into their bidding. As fear mongering as it sounds- the truth is criminals do not separate large, medium, or small targets since everyone’s money spends the same. Every business should have a tested recovery plan in place.
What are the benefits to a business who create a Disaster Recovery Plan?
Many businesses do not actually have a DR plan in place, but the thought of adding one someday. Nobody expects catastrophe to happen until it does, its Murphy’s Law. The reality for most mortals is that deciding what to invest in a DR solution is a risk management consideration. They must decide what they can stand to lose and what they can weather.
The benefits of having a DR plan is having the ability to restore your company’s data and important applications to a working state after the worst has happened. Although another piece of this puzzle is what some loop into the same bucket, a Business Continuity plan. These are similar but very different- you can think of a Business Continuity plan as the avenue your employees are going to access company systems. For example, your IT Solutions Provider or Managed Service Provider has restored all your data/applications but now your employees need a computer connected to your network to keep business moving.
We can never be prepared for every possible scenario but planning for the worst will give you every advantage to keep your doors open and business moving forward.
Red Diamond’s Recommendation for Disaster Recovery Solutions
There is no question that a solid DR plan is a necessity for any business to ensure your business can go the distance. In April of 2020, FEMA published a study stating that 40 percent of small businesses never reopen following a disaster. Then to add icing on the cake, 90 percent fail within a year unless they can resume operations with 5 days.
Businesses need to make the risk management decisions to recover to the best of their budget’s ability. They should also consider requirements for their industry, HIPPA for example highly recommends a plan be in place as part of the compliance process. This plan needs to be tested at least every other month for reliability and for training purposes.
After reading this post, do you feel like you need to review your current DR processes? Please reach out to us here, call, or drop us an email.
I wish you all the best in the years to come, I hope to hear from you!
