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Disaster Recovery Plans: All Your IT Questions Answered

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Your company’s time and resources are limited. When you spend time planning for the future, it likely centers around a plan for a project, expansion or improvement. The last thing you want to spend precious time and resources on is planning for everything to go wrong.

However, if you don’t plan for disaster recovery, all your hard work for future growth can disappear, leaving you rebuilding your business from scratch and losing potential revenue and precious data.

What is a disaster recovery plan?

It’s a plan to get back to business as usual. Disasters can range from damage done to hardware by a natural disaster, user error or cyberattacks. A thorough disaster recovery plan is detailed and delegates tasks to a team of information technology professionals and internal employees who can restore your business’ data as quickly as possible. It allows the organization to recover data, gain access to networking technology, reconnect power and repair software or hardware.

When should planning begin?

The good news is that cloud computing and managed IT services makes disaster recovery much less difficult. Your managed services team — a third-party team of IT professionals — can assist your organization in transitioning to a cloud computing system.

The cloud — represented as multiple, secure data centers across the country — ensures that your sensitive and important information is secure. Data is backed up continuously so loss in the event of a disaster is miniscule. Your managed services team will use the latest data backup to restore your systems.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a disaster recovery plan. Your IT provider can work with your organization to determine steps to cover everything from what happens if your data is compromised to finding temporary hardware and software that allows your team to get back to work even as recovery begins. 

What should be in a disaster recovery plan?

Businesses often believe their disaster recovery plan should focus only on the worst-case scenario. However, consider what you need from your IT services and equipment to carry out daily operations. While the ultimate disaster could occur, daily mishaps are more likely, such as a corrupted software program or finnicky phone systems. 

Additionally, it’s important to not only have the guidelines for restoration, your IT team must have comprehensive access to your applications so they can get to work as soon as a disaster strikes. Both IT professionals and internal employees should understand the tasks they may need to carry out if IT systems go awry.

How do I create a disaster recovery plan?

As your organization and its processes evolve, your IT plan should be updated. To create a plan with your IT provider, consider these steps:

  • Establish the scope of the organization’s daily work
  • Gather network infrastructure and access documents
  • Identify threats
  • Review past actions during outages or disasters
  • Build an emergency response team
  • Review the plan with IT professionals and management
  • Test disaster recovery plan
  • Update the plan

Infomax can help create a disaster recovery plan for your team. For more information, call 515-244-5203. 

Why you should back up your data today

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No one wants to have a Plan B. Most people spend so much time and energy on the original plan that they don’t consider a backup. However, your business’ sensitive information is too important not to back up in advance. Most businesses have years’ worth of sensitive data, including business, employee, client, financial and tax information, that they can’t afford to have compromised.

The good news is that if you spend a bit of time safeguarding and archiving your company’s data, you’ll spend much less time scrambling for a plan and trying recover your information if the unthinkable does occur. The solution is to schedule regular backups for your company’s important data and documents.

Organizations that still store many of their important files on paper — without a digital archive — clearly face the most risk if natural disaster strikes. However, storm damage can still wipe out digital files, especially if they are stored in the same facility. Findings from FEMA and the United States Small Business Administration indicate that the vast majority of businesses that suffer from a natural disaster fail within the first year or two following the damage. A survey of more than 500 IT professionals by cloud-based backup company Carbonite found that 40 percent of respondents believed their small business would go under permanently if they lost all its files. Worse yet, 58 percent of IT professionals believed they couldn’t handle the loss of any of important data. 

While Mother Nature is unpredictable, cyberattacks can be just as difficult to guard against. About 43 percent of cyberattacks are targeted at small businesses, according to Small Business Trends. The networks that house your company’s information could be compromised through malware. Worse yet, your business could fall prey to ransomware malware, which locks users out of a network until they pay a ransom to hackers. Ransomware attack frequency is growing at about 350 percent annually, according to Cisco. Safeguard your data before an attack occurs.

Even if businesses are lucky enough to escape natural disaster damage and cyberattacks, data files can become corrupted through user or program error. Regularly backing up data ensures that data can easily be restored in the event of data corruption, much the same way as edit history on a document can restore the file.

How often should data be backed up? A proper backup solution program should archive your information multiple times a day. Luckily, Infomax’s iGuard solutions automatically backup your data every 15 minutes, ensuring that your business can recover from almost any emergency situation. Our automatic solution works for your IT professionals. It secures your data to guard against cyberattacks. Additionally, we help your company stay compliant with legal requirements, such as HIPAA, SOX and GLBA. If your data is not breached or lost, you don’t lose yours or clients’ valuable and sensitive information.

To learn more about our backup solutions, contact us at 1-800-727-4629. 

Why Your Business Needs a Disaster Recovery Strategy

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Due to the multitude of cyberthreats we face today, businesses need to be ready for anything when it comes to data security. Whether it’s a natural disaster, a cyberattack, or just human error, there’s always the looming threat of a potential data disaster that could strike your company at anytime. This is why it is so important to have a disaster recovery strategy in place to avoid downtime—or worse, a complete shutdown.

Some eye-popping stats regarding data disasters
If you’re a small business, the following numbers are extremely unsettling. Again, this is a testament to the importance of a disaster recovery strategy. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette:
• Nearly 40 percent of small businesses close after a disaster—and only 25 percent of that group ever reopen
• 52 percent of small businesses say it would take at least three months to recover from a disaster
• 75 percent of small businesses do not have a disaster recovery plan in place

Mobile devices exacerbate the data security problem
Most likely, your employees utilize mobile devices to conduct business on a daily basis. Unfortunately, these devices increase your risk of a potential data breach. If a phone is left behind at a meeting or in a public space, it can easily fall into the wrong hands. A disaster recovery strategy will counter this issue by enabling remote lockdowns and device wipes on all authorized mobile devices in the event that one goes missing or stolen.

Your reputation is on the line
We know the kind of damage a disaster can cause your business when it comes to downtime and shutdowns—but don’t ignore the damage it will do to your reputation. It takes years of hard work to build trustworthy reputations amongst your clients. A data breach with no recovery plan in place will surely sour your relationships in no time. Potential clients will also be wary about going into business with your company after a data disaster.

A little preparation goes a long way
It’s essential for businesses to not downplay the seriousness of a disaster recovery strategy. Even with a temporary solution in place, you can keep your operations afloat following an emergency. Regular cloud backups and off-site backups are essential pieces to a disaster recovery strategy that require regular maintenance and management. This kind of diligence will show your clients just how much you value the vital data that makes up your company, and foster trust.

To learn more about data recovery strategies and how they can help your business in the event of a disaster, contact us today.