Modern businesses rely on digital assets and data to run their operations more than ever before. While these resources are one of the greatest strengths of modern business, they can also be one of the greatest vulnerabilities. How crippling would it be if that data was lost or stolen? Our disaster recovery services exist to help you get your business back to full strength even if the worst does come to pass.

In a perfect world, your IT best practices would be enough to keep your data always protected and available. However, technology fails, cyber criminals infiltrate tightly guarded networks, and your business can find itself with its back against the wall.

Your business needs a backup and disaster recovery plan to help it recover from the damage that data loss and theft can cause. Don’t be one of the majority of companies without disaster recovery that close their doors within one year after a major data disaster.

How Is My Business’s Data At Risk?

Being aware of best practices and doing what you can, personally, to ensure you never leave your data, hardware, or software open to unauthorized access is a start, but it’s far from enough to protect your data. To understand what data backup and disaster recovery can be so essential, here are just a few of the ways that your business’s data could be at risk:

  • Employee error: Even with comprehensive IT security training for your employees, there is a margin of error that must be accounted for. Phishing scams, malware lurking in seemingly innocent attachments, and other similar common methods of infiltration are still widely used because they’re still largely effective. Educating your team about the dangers is important, but sometimes it’s not enough.
  • Lack of premium security software: A free antivirus software is better protection than no protection, but unless you’re willing to pay, you’re simply unlikely to get the highest quality of protection. Security is an investment you should be willing to make.
  • Out-of-date software: Most software sold and run by other companies are subjected to countless updates. While this can be annoying, it’s usually for the essential purposes of protecting them against new security exploits. Legacy software and software no longer supported by their vendors are often targeted by hackers because they aren’t getting the latest security updates.
  • Hardware failure or loss: Not every case of data loss is due to the breach, either. If a piece of hardware fails, is irreparably damaged, or lost, then you could also lose all the essential data that was being hosted on it.
  • Device theft: Similarly to being lost, devices storing essential data could simply be stolen. If the data is unencrypted or the device isn’t password protected, then this could see that data falling into the hands of someone willing to use it maliciously.

Needless to say, the many ways that your data can fall out of your control should be a clear indication of why it’s essential to have a contingency plan in place if they should happen. With the rising rate of threats like phishing scams and ransomware, disaster recovery is more crucial than ever.

How Data Loss Can Impact Your Business

If you pay attention to the news, then it should be no surprise that major data loss, especially when it’s due to a breach, can be a fatal blow to even a major company. Each year, several businesses have to close their doors due to data loss. But how does that happen? Let’s take a closer look at the impacts that data loss can have on your business:

  • The immediate downtime: Immediately following a breach or a loss, productivity will halt. This is often due to the fact that the digital assets your team needs to work are simply no longer accessible. In the event of a cyberattack, work may be halted while the cause and scope of the attack are investigated.
  • Sensitive data exposure: Not all data is sensitive enough to be a threat. However, if you have personal or financial information about staff, customers, clients, or business partners, you could be held legally liable for not effectively securing their data.
  • Your reputation suffers: When a data breach is discovered, you may find that you lose the faith that the market once had in your business. This impact on the business’s reputation can be permanent.
  • The costs of recovery: Recovering your data will always come at a cost. With a disaster recovery plan, those costs can be cut ahead of time. Failing to prepare and attempting to recover a drive after the event can cost up to $7,500 per hard drive alone.

A backup and disaster recovery plan cannot cancel out the impact of a major data breach, but it can mitigate it. Downtime can be cut down significantly, the costs of recovery can be reduced, and you can bolster confidence in the company by showing your ability to handle the crisis quickly and effectively.

How Will A Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan Help?

Now that the threats are clear, you should be aware of the necessity for a backup and disaster recovery plan. But how, exactly, does it protect your business and your data?

Instant and flexible data backup copies and protects your essential data and virtual resources, storing them on a secure environment on the Cloud so that should you lose the original copies, you can quickly reintegrate your lost assets.

By documenting the specific procedures that each member of the disaster recovery team is supposed to perform in the event of a disaster before the event, you can respond much more rapidly to data loss and breaches.

The specifics of your backup and disaster recovery plan depend on the specifics of your business. Get in touch and we will be glad to run a consultation that can show you how we can protect your business in the worst-case event and ensure that you make it to the other side without the risk of losing it all.

Don’t put your company’s data at risk by not having a plan in place. Contact Network Providence today!