While we certainly hope your business is never stricken by a disaster, it is always better to be safe than sorry. Remember, it is far easier to recover from a disaster if you have a plan in place. And it is much better to sit down and put a plan together now than after a disaster strikes and major data loss occurs.
You have probably seen us throw around this statistic before, but it is a good one. Of companies that experience major data loss, 51% close within 2 years, while 43% never recover.
Preparing for Disaster Recovery: It is Important to Have a Plan
- Backups: Backups are not only cost-effective, but extremely important. You need to ensure that you are backing up everything – operating systems, applications, and data. Just make sure you store the backups off site. Otherwise, they could be affected and ruined by the same disaster plaguing your business.
- Recovery Tiers: Not every position within a company can handle downtime. Some have need zero or near-zero downtime. Because of this, it is important to create recovery tiers, which is a hierarchy of restoration. To accomplish this, most organizations use the following metrics: Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). RPO the frequency of backups. For example, a four-hour RPO dictates that the most recent backup can’t be more than four hours old. Meanwhile, RTO indicates how long after a disaster it takes to restore service. For example, a four-hour RTO means that systems must be back up and running four hours after an outage.
- Align Strategies with Business Strategy: It is not cost effective to treat every aspect of your business as critical. Because of this, your disaster recovery strategy must align with your business strategy. So what aspects of your business are most important to you and the future success of your business?
- Prepare for Recovery: The recovery phase is when you start getting everything back up and running. It may not be a permanent solution and performance may not be optimal, but it enables your business to get back on track. It is very similar to replacing a flat tire with a spare.
- Prepare for Restoration: The restoration phase is when you actually restore things to the way they were before.
Make sense? Need help?
Working Nets: Baltimore, Maryland Disaster Preparedness & Disaster Recovery Services
At Working Nets, we were founded to provide small businesses, like yours, with expert information technology support. We know computer and network performance is crucial to success. That is why we offer disaster preparedness and disaster recovery services to help assure that your vital business data is kept secure if disaster strikes.
If you have any questions, please contact Working Nets by calling (443) 992-7394 or visit WorkingNets.com today!
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