Tag Archives: disaster recovery

The Consequences of Not Having a Proper Disaster Recovery Plan

Disaster Recovery Plan
Cybersecurity, Data Backup, Manage Service, Security, , , , , ,

We have often talked about how having a disaster recovery plan is one of the most crucial elements of good business management. Despite our constant posts and reminders, however, there are still thousands of business owners all over the world that do not take disaster recovery seriously.

Most businesses take precautions to protect other aspects of their business—car insurance, vendor contracts, and so on. But it’s scary that many people choose not to spend money on a good disaster recovery plan.

How will you handle a disaster that damages your data, equipment, or other resources? If you have prepared a business contingency plan for such events, you will have something to fall back on. There might be losses, but they will be minimal, and you will be able to restore everything soon enough.

If you don’t have a proper disaster recovery plan, you might not be able to continue with business operations. Here are some consequences you might face if you cannot prepare a suitable recovery plan for your business right from the beginning.

Disaster and Substantial Data Loss

Businesses rely on many kinds of data to operate properly. From marketing to sales to customer records, your company’s data plays a considerable role in day-to-day operations. If your data gets lost or damaged, your business can invariably collapse!

Even huge companies are not immune to the effects of data loss. Many people have had to spend millions of dollars just to get their data back after they lost it because of a cyberattack or a natural disaster.

Business Interruption

If a disaster hits your business and you don’t have the means to recover, your operations may come to a stop. You can’t work and earn money until your business is back on its feet. Without a proper disaster recovery plan, recovery can take a very long time!

Depending on the amount of damage, you will either need to rebuild your business or relocate. Either way, the process will be difficult if you don’t have a recovery plan.

Loss of Customers when not having a Disaster Recovery Plan

No matter how loyal some of your customers might be, it is unlikely that all of them will stick around if they see that your business has suffered from a disaster. Some may wait a while if they see you doing your best to recover and restore all lost information. They will take their business elsewhere if they discover you can’t fully recover.

What’s worse is that even if the disaster did not directly affect other clients, the news might spread quickly, and they might leave as well. New prospective clients might also think twice about entrusting their needs to you.

Huge Spending

Disaster recovery can be expensive, even with a plan, especially if you do not prepare for a disaster. Depending on the type of disaster, you may need to buy new hardware and re-encrypt any lost or damaged data. You are also losing a lot of money because you haven’t yet gotten back on your feet.

Disaster Recovery Plan: Final Thoughts

Research shows that 40% of businesses do not have a contingency plan in case of a disaster. These businesses will have a hard time getting their money back if something bad happens.

If you want to prepare your business for a disaster, we can help! Get in touch with us, and we will build a disaster recovery strategy to give your business the most comprehensive protection possible. Don’t forget that we can help you check if your office has exposed or stolen passwords or login info by running a Free Dark Web Scan. If you want to test your Backup Disaster Knowledge, take our BDR Quiz!

4 Situations Where You Want a Robust Backup Recovery Plan

Data Backup, , , ,
Backup Recovery Plan on a laptop screen in office

Disaster recovery plans cover you for disaster situations and also simple file recovery

Businesses often underestimate just how important a backup recovery plan really is. Backup recovery plans are put together as an afterthought, a ‘just in case’ like wearing your helmet to bicycle up and down your home street. But believe it or not, there are actually tons of different situations where a great backup plan is important, useful, or even necessary to keep your business on it’s feet. In fact, you’ll probably wind up using our backups more frequently than your top-of-the-line virus detection software.

Because like that bicycle helmet, a good recovery plan can be the difference between business life and death when a disaster finally does come along. And you’ll be glad you were prepared. Let’s take a quick look at four different business circumstances where a backup recovery plan is vital. Circumstances that are surprisingly common in the wide business world.

1) A Software Update Fails and Corrupts All Your Data

Most of our software today updates automatically. We have it set up (or it sets itself up) to periodically check for updates, download them, and sell-install them in the dead of night when no one is using your computer work resources. This happens all the time and is something we’ve come to rely on. But not all updates work correctly. A single piece of misaligned data that was damaged in the download can wreck the entire update.

And worse, updating currently active business software means that one corrupted auto-update can put your entire business worth of stored internal data at risk. An automatic update can fail and corrupt some or every scrap of data stored inside the original un-updated version. With a comprehensive backup recovery plan, however, you can easily restore all your data and software from the version before the update, then manually handle the update a second time to make sure nothing goes wrong.

2) An Employee Mistake Accidentally Deletes an Entire Database

Employee mistakes happen. And sometimes, they are enormous business-ruining mistakes no matter how genuinely sorry the employee is or how understandable the mistake might be. It is possible in some businesses for a mis-click or accidental keypress can delete reams of priceless business or customer data. Usually by clearing a database table or column without realizing that they have done so.

In this situation, you don’t want to have to lay the entire disaster at one employee’s feet. Instead, with a backup and recovery plan, it should be simple to rescue your company by restoring the lost data. From there, you can manage employee discipline with a calm and even approach that is appropriate to the mistake, not the potential averted consequences.

3) Your Entire Company Network is Ransomware’d

Then, of course, there’s the ransomware and other network-wide malware attacks that freeze you out of your own system. Because you can’t trust hackers to respond honorably to a pay-off, it’s important to assume that any computer compromised by ransomware or similar is probably ‘dead’. In other words, it needs to be wiped to factory settings to eradicate the malware and then restored to a functional business state through backup recovery.

If you have backups of your workstation setup and/or your entire network, this is the time to bust them out. Wipe everything that could be infected and rebuild our on-site computer system back from the ground up. The better your backups and implementation are, the more completely and quickly you can recover from a widespread malware attack.

4) A Flash-Flood Drowns Your Office, Including Local Archives

Natural disasters are another unexpected way that your data could be threatened. Even with all the cloud services, most businesses have at least a few locally stored physical archives on local servers, disks, or drives. Some businesses have their computer systems still almost entirely on-site. But this puts ‘all your eggs in one basket’ in terms of physical risk to your office building.

As the last few years have proven, you can’t do much to predict when extreme weather is about to ravage your part of the country. And if your office is hit with flash floods, earthquakes or something as simple as a neighborhood fire, all your local files and computers could be destroyed. But with a robust set of cloud-stored backups, you can not only recover those local archives. You may be able to rebuild from scratch using your backups of the previous network and work stations.

Having a well-built and comprehensive backup structure and recovery plan is vital to business continuity and disaster recovery.  For more information about building the best backup recovery plan for your business, contact us today!

5 Ways Preparing for a System Failure Should Be Part of Day-to-Day Operations

Data Backup, , , , , ,
Preparing for a System Failure as a Part of Day-to-Day Operations

Being prepared for a disaster should be  standard operating procedure

System failures can take everything. But if you plan ahead, you’ll have the infrastructure to set everything back in place. Instead of just relying on a disaster recovery plan and intermittent maintenance, build these five practices into your business’s usual operations.

1. Back up your actively changing data multiple times throughout the day.

System failures strike at the worst possible time. That includes in the middle of the day and right after your peak selling hour. If your systems don’t back up data frequently throughout the day, you may lose completed orders and sales without any way to notice the loss. This includes both online sales with customers anticipating deliveries or service and in-store transactions that won’t be totaled up into your third-party service until the end of the day.

Automate restore points that capture the frequently used programs or the systems that handle day-to-day operations. You’ll capture the vast majority of what you need without filling up your cloud in a week.

2. Save deeper system restore points regularly and don’t delete them.

But just capturing the active data entries every hour or every quarter of an hour isn’t everything you need to keep your business safe. Also schedule deeper data recovery downloads that capture everything. These larger restore points can be scheduled less frequently depending on the size or urgency of your business. Also be sure to set the schedule for low-activity points so your network isn’t overloaded.

These deeper packets of data are important because a system failure can wipe out everything. Having the day’s input won’t matter if the entire database is gone. So use these as insurance against complete wipeouts and then filter the transactional changes back in.

Deeper restore points also protect your company from slow-growing threats. Some network errors don’t immediately cause problems. Instead, they corrupt critical data or code behind the scenes. Save these points for as long as possible so you can reach weeks or months back to salvage uncorrupted data.

3. Run disaster recovery drills so everyone knows what to do.

Once you have your data saved and your system restores automated, the biggest problem in the event of a system failure is people. Train your employees so they know what to do once everyone goes down. Also, make sure you have hard copies of your data recovery and business continuity plans so people can find the procedure.

But there’s going to be panic if your company hasn’t gone through this before or if it’s been a long time. So hold drills every so often, and train new employees on what to do

4. Make your monitoring system notice the signs of an incoming system failure.

Usually, a system failure seems to strike out of nowhere. But they have lots of invisible warning signs that your employees just didn’t see. Network outages, old hardware, and more are all signifiers that increase your risk. A buildup of corrupted data or an increasingly unsteady code is noticeable as long as you know where to look.

So strengthen your system by adding monitoring software that can identify potential warning signs. Set threshold points where your IT staff or service knows to deal with the problem while it can still be prevented. Problem prevention can seem less urgent than dealing with customer tickets or a task requested by the executive team, but it can only be ignored for so long.

5. Train everyone to save in the cloud and not on the hardware.

Virtual computer systems have made system failures both better and worse. One of the best benefits of switching to the cloud and virtual machines is that a physically damaged server won’t ruin your business. But that’s only true if the employees actually make use of the virtual tools. Strap the company computers and devices to reduce local storage. If you have to leave local storage in place and your company has a server in the storage room as part of your legal requirements, automate that backup. Also, make sure employees are clear on where to save their documents and projects.

Go to SystemsNet here for more backup procedures and the tools you need to optimize your disaster recovery plan.

Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR) Plan: Preparing For A New Year

Data Backup, , , , ,
Businessman hand using laptop with backup disaster recovery concept

Reviewing your disaster recovery plan is critical in keeping your network up and running.

Every business needs to be properly prepared for anything these days, including disasters. There will be plenty on the line for your business if a disaster strikes. If a disaster does strike, you could lose sensitive data that you may not be able to get back. If a disaster does strike, will your business be ready to handle a data loss incident?

People from all parts of the world have made their resolution as the new year was set to begin. One of the best ways your business can enter into the new year is to have an effective and efficient Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) plan that will greatly minimize any downtime and keep your business safe from any events that you cannot control. We want to help you create a BDR plan that will meet all of your business’s needs.

An Effective BDR Plan

Many small business owners do not always understand how valuable their business data is, but it is a very valuable asset to the business. This is why it is so important that you are able to protect your business data at all times. One of the best ways to do this is to find a BDR solution that will provide you with the tools and resources you need to restore your data. In addition, all of your data will not be created equally. You will find that some of your data will have a high value and others will not. If you want to build an effective strategy that will protect your business from any unfortunate data loss, we recommend that you sort through your data so you can determine what data you will need at all times and what data may not be as useful as the others.

Improving Your BDR This Year

We know that everyone wants to strive for better each year, and it should be no different when you have a business. Implementing an effective Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan this year is a great way for your business to improve this year. We know it can seem like a daunting task when it is time to implement the strategies that fit your business, but we recommend that you try some of the following guidelines and suggestions:

  • Make sure you are communicating with your IT team to plan the right recovery strategy for your business. You will need to have a plan that will fully outline your goals, missions, and objectives.

 

  • Find the right Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) platform that will give you every opportunity to back up your data without having long wait times and downtimes.

 

  • When you find the right platform and implement your platform, we encourage you to test your backup on a regular basis. When you regularly test your backup plan, you will be able to determine its efficiency and effectiveness. With a regular test, you will have the assurance you need in knowing that your BDR plan will be ready to roll when you need it.

Every year, small businesses, mid-size businesses, and large businesses are hit with threats, malware attacks, viruses, natural disasters, and more. Also, some businesses lose data due to a human mistake. Unfortunately, many of these businesses do not have the proper Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) plan, which will result in a significant amount of downtime as the business tries to recover its data.

We know the new year has just started and you have so many things on your plate already, but we encourage you to make room for BDR. We want to make sure your business’s data is available at all times, even when disaster strikes. For more information on our Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) solutions, please do not hesitate to contact us today.