Business continuity is crucial to any organisation.
Taking steps to avoid disaster, minimise risk and protect your business is essential.
All businesses should have a Disaster Recovery Plan in place to guard against such things as cyber-attacks, system downtime, equipment failure, loss of communications or a natural disaster.
Business continuity means minimising downtime, as well as protecting the IT infrastructure, including hardware, software, networks, procedures and people. A Disaster Recovery Plan should reflect this and involve planning, testing and possibly even a separate physical site for restoring operations.
Beyond traditional backups, conventional Disaster Recovery is a much more complex and costly proposition. Many businesses forego spending out on something they think they might never need, without giving full consideration to what might actually happen to their organisation should disaster strike.
Cloud technology has made backing up entire systems much more cost-effective and straightforward, but before you employ a cloud-based Disaster Recovery service there are a number of things you should consider:
- Will the DR service work based on the existing infrastructure? – Integration with existing backup and DR platforms.
- What percentage of customers can the provider simultaneously support during a regional disaster?
- How will users access internal applications?
- Failback procedures – How long can a customer run in the provider’s data centre following a disaster?
How much help will they provide during a disaster? - What is the process for testing?
- Is it scalable?
With any Disaster Recovery Plan, an organisation should carry out a risk assessment to highlight potential threats, along with detailed strategies for recovery in order to minimise any negative impact to your business.
Why aren’t more businesses employing a full Disaster Recovery Plan to ensure business continuity in the face of a disaster?
Regardless of the type of operation, if the vital business continuity procedures are not in place, a business will cease to function at full capacity if a disaster strikes. This will inevitably lead to a significant increase in down time and expenditure.
A Disaster Recovery Plan must become a priority for organisations. With the increase of cyber-attacks on businesses of all sizes, no company can expect to be immune from the threat.
Find out more about how we can help your business by calling 01892 577 577 and ask to speak to one of our in-house UK business consultants.
