4 Reasons You Need a Disaster Recovery Plan

“Can my business continue to function without my critical data, applications and operations?”

A firm yes is the only answer that indicates that you do not need a viable disaster recovery plan. Let’s face it, at some point your data will be at risk. It could be a machine error, a human error, a virus or even a natural disaster like the floods of only a few years ago.  Not having the proper precautions in place could mean losing it all, massive damage to your company’s reputation and with new data protection legislation coming into place hefty fines! Think of your disaster recovery plan as an insurance policy for your data and business should something out of your control happen.

With this in mind we sat down with our technical team and looked at why a business really does need to protect itself from the unpredictable. Below are the 4 things that unanimously our team highlighted:

1. Machines & Hardware Failure

While we’ve made huge strides in the reliance of our technology, it’s still not perfect and is bound to have issues here and there. While it can be expensive for your company to eliminate any single point of failure in your IT infrastructure, it is really the only way you can be sure that a hardware failure will not interrupt your service or cause data loss. The best option is to back up your data regularly, ideally with a leading and highly secure managed hosting provider.  This will help to eliminate any interruptions in case of IT infrastructure failures.

2. Humans Make Mistakes

While this is among some of the hardest mistakes to prevent and correct, ensuring your data is regularly backed up lets you restore it to an error-free state. As much as we wish we were, people are not perfect and can easily overlook an important step in a process and accidentally delete data or enter the wrong data. Making sure you have efficient processes in place and good quality assurance programs are your best bet, but having an online backup solution can be as equally important.

3. Nature is Unpredictable

We’ve all been witness to what can happen when the wrath of Mother Nature hits, which can be pretty unpredictable. Businesses that don’t have a backup and disaster recovery plan in place can find it almost impossible to resume operations after a major disaster hits. In fact, an estimated 80% of all companies that experience a business interruption of greater than five days, without recovery plans, go out of business.

4. Customers Want Access 24/7/365

The average consumer now expects the information they want to access to be available whenever it is convenient for them.  This means that if your organization is facing infrastructure issues and cannot get up and running in a timely fashion, these anxious customers could jump ship to a competitor.

Every business out there is susceptible to an IT disaster, and the only way to ensure that your business mitigates its interruptions is to have a fast recovery due to a well-crafted backup and disaster recovery plan. Too many businesses are ill-prepared for when an IT disaster strikes.