Five Reasons Why You Need a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
There is no way to predict the future. Power outage, security breach, ransomware attacks, and natural disasters may strike with little to no warning. The impact of data loss can result in unplanned downtime, which can result in loss of revenue. This is why successful data backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solutions are essential to virtually every business.
Understanding Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Data backup is the process of storing a copy of data to a separate storage, locally or on the cloud such that in case of loss or damage to the data, they can be restored.
Disaster recovery refers to a strategic plan and process that seeks to protect your business from natural or human-induced disaster by quickly reestablishing and maintaining critical functions after an outage, thereby causing minimal disruptions to business continuity.
Five Reasons Why You Need a Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
To minimize the impact of unplanned downtime on your business, you need to understand the essentials of a data backup and disaster recovery plan. Here are the top 5 reasons why your business needs a backup and disaster recovery plan.
1. Cost of Downtime
Unplanned downtime and outages can cause losses amounting to millions of dollars. According to research firm Clutch,60% of small businesses that lose data close within six months, while 90% of businesses with no disaster recovery plan close after a major failure.
If you rely on data within your business premises, productivity will suffer on the occasion of a data loss. The longer it takes to recover the data, the longer your employees will be unable to perform, and your profits will suffer as a result.
2. Reputation And Customer Loss
While it’s cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one, trying to win an old customer’s trust after a data loss or an extended outage in services is closer to impossible. This is amplified when the customer is losing money due to the disruption and will probably relocate to your competitors.
The damage to your brand that occurs during a data loss or significant downtime is enormous. Relationships between you and your customers are destroyed, and your brand tarnished and will take time to recover from that.
3. Machines And Hardware Fail
Even the most advanced IT infrastructure falls short of a perfect track record. According to data from Dynamic Technologies, the analysis found that aside from power loss and data corruption, hardware problems accounted for 45% of data loss and unplanned downtime. Having a disaster recovery plan is the only way to ensure that a hardware disruption does not interrupt your services or cause data loss.
The most cost-effective plan would be having an IT company like EVERNET that has local servers backup points and a cloud-controlled redundancy for secured off-site backups. This will protect your business from IT infrastructure-related failures.
4. Human Errors
Much like machines, humans are not perfect, and they make mistakes too. Often, downtime can be caused by something as simple as human error entirely. While human error can’t be eradicated, steps should be taken and ensure recovery time is fast. Having a disaster recovery plan will allow you and your employees to be on the same page when it comes to handling a disaster.
In the event of a human error, a disaster recovery plan will enable your team to operate more effectively. They can access a series of restore points created during regular backups.
5. Permanent Data Loss
You can lose your business if you don’t have the right backup and disaster recovery plan. The actions you take to fortify the data for retrieval will impact significantly when you try to retrieve it.
A natural disaster can damage any physical storage backup devices you might have, making the recovery process lengthy and complicated, which may lead to permanent data loss. The impact of permanent data loss is not pleasant for any business.
Get a Solid Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
As a business, you cannot afford to neglect a BDR plan. The cost of investing in backup and disaster recovery is justified, given how much loss you could incur from unplanned downtime. Ignoring a BDR plan is catastrophic for your brand in the age of digital perfection.
Don’t gamble with your business. A BDR is not just about data but more about retaining your customers’ confidence, preventing productivity dips of your employees, and missed business opportunities. Get in touch with EVERNET if you’re looking to develop a backup and disaster recovery plan for your business.
Eric is a Business IT cybersecurity advisor, consultant, manager, integrator, and protector who founded EVERNET in 2007. Eric co-hosts a podcast called “Finance and Technology Insights by Brian & Eric” on YouTube. Eric is a regular contributor to the EVERNET blog, writing about the latest technology news and providing his expertise in cyber security prevention and management.
