Is Your Business Prepared for a Disaster? Can You do Business Without Your Data?
Backup and Disaster Recovery are vitally important because disasters can come in many forms – and they can happen when you least expect it. The important thing is to be prepared so critical data can be recovered and your organization can become operational as soon as possible.
A well-defined data backup and disaster recovery plan play a crucial role in minimizing downtime in a disaster and preventing data loss in the event of server or application failure.
Backup and Disaster Recovery are vitally important because disasters can come in many forms – and they can happen when you least expect it. The important thing is to be prepared so critical data can be recovered and your organization can become operational as soon as possible.
Your data may be customer records, or possibly customer orders. If you create custom projects for each customer, your data is vital to the day-to-day operation of your business, and any kind of data loss would have a detrimental effect.
There’s a chance you already have a backup process in place, and that’s a great start. Maybe you backup daily to tape, or USB, or some other kind of media. If you store this backup media in your building, and it’s your only backup, it may still be susceptible to damage from fire and natural disasters.
Your backup may also be out of date – do you perform backups hourly, daily, weekly, monthly…yearly? Can your business withstand losing the amount of data you’ve created in the gap since your last backup? Regular backups are great, but only if they are in line with the amount of data you create.
A well-defined data backup and disaster recovery plan play a crucial role in minimizing downtime in a disaster and preventing data loss in the event of server or application failure. With comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solutions available to businesses of all sizes, there is no reason for you not to protect your investment in your business.
Protect Your Business
You may believe that your business is safe and that all your vital data is unlikely to be lost. However, there are multiple ways in which data can be lost forever:
- Fires
- Floods
- Power outages
- Hurricanes
- Human error
- Thieves & hackers
- Cyber Security Attacks
Fire, floods, and hurricanes can damage or destroy the media that your data is saved to, whether it’s a dedicated server or a backup device. Power outages can corrupt data that is stored on hard drives – and then there are human problems to consider.
A simple error, an unfortunate random click, and an accidental drag-and-drop can delete your data in the blink of an eye. A malicious intervention from data thieves and hackers can erase everything you’ve ever created. Even malware and viruses can erase your data, or worse, put it behind a paywall so you can no longer access it.
What value can you put on your data? How long would it take you to recreate it if you had to start from nothing? How much better would it be if you had a disaster recovery plan in place?
Cost-Effective Network Backup and Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is exactly what the name suggests, the ability to get your business up and running again after a disaster. What makes a true disaster recovery solution is the ability to restore full systems quickly, in a matter of hours or even minutes, on available computing resources which may be local, but may also be remote if the situation dictates.
Having a spare computer isn’t the issue – it’s the ability to get to the information that makes running your business possible that is the important part. Only 6% of companies that suffer catastrophic data loss survive, while 43% never reopen – and 51% close within 2 years of the disaster. 93% of the companies that did not have their data backed up in the event of a disaster went out of business. (Best’s Underwriting Guide)
If only 7% of businesses survive after massive data loss, what are the chances of your business being one of the lucky ones? A full and comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategy are necessary to keep your business operational. There’s no need to let all your hard work go to waste when a simple backup strategy can save the potential pain data loss can cause.
We offer the following solutions to our customers:
- On-site and Offsite Solutions
- Data Center Monitoring
- PC & Server Local Backup Monitoring
- PC & Server Offsite Replication Monitoring
- Offsite Storage (critical files & folders)
- Physical Security of Backup Data
- Storage Redundancy with Multiple Units
- Data Center Equipment
- Data Recovery Test
With the provision of both onsite and offsite solutions, your data will be safe no matter what happens. Storage redundancy further enhances the safety of your data by keeping backup copies across multiple instances of storage media – even if one fails, the backup is still available from the other media.
At the end of the day, your company is asking for trouble by not having the proper data backup and recovery solutions in place. There is no need to face a risk like this when you can protect the future of your business by keeping backups and having a robust disaster recovery plan in place.
Why backup PCs?
Many businesses operate with a server at the center of their network. This is where all the files, folders, and information are stored, making the server the most important part of the network, and therefore the device that is most commonly backed up.
While this makes perfect sense, users never go to the server directly. They always access the data through their own computer which makes the PC a vital piece of equipment for the user.
Should the PC fail, it’s a simple matter of replacing it with a new one and carrying on, right? Wrong!
Factor in how long it will take to reinstall all the applications that were installed on the original PC, adapting all the settings and preferences to provide the custom environment the user had configured, and ensuring that all security software, updates, and patches are installed.
Bringing a PC back online with a backup/disaster recovery plan can be much faster, much more effective, and much less disruptive to the user and the rest of the business.
Disaster recovery is all about getting everything back to normal as quickly as possible with minimal disruption to your employees and no disruption at all to your customers. Can you be certain that if your customers need a response in a hurry that they will still be your customer when you’ve fully reinstalled a PC? Or would be prepared with a disaster recovery plan be the most sensible course of action?
Your customers only remain with you as long as you can provide a service, so make sure there are no interruptions to your service with full PC backups.
Get backing up now!
We offer backup solutions for all kinds of businesses that are set up to work with the needs and requirements of your business. Your data is valuable, and in most cases irreplaceable. Don’t risk your livelihood simply because you didn’t back up your data.
The best time to start backing up your data was yesterday, but it’s never too late to get started. Let a member of the 1-800 Office Solutions team help you to protect what you’ve worked so hard to build over the years.
Contact us today to get started with your own custom backup and disaster recovery plan. You may not need it today, but when disaster strikes in the future, you’ll be glad you took the time to prepare your business.
Get in touch by sending us a message today!