Disaster Recovery Plans: All Your IT Questions Answered

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. 

What to Look For in a New Office Printer

Your business is as unique as the market and clients you serve. When it comes to office equipment, you need a printer individualized for your exact needs. There are many printers on the market, so determining which one is the right fit for your office can be difficult. We’re here to help you clear through the clutter.

It’s important to understand the role your printer needs to play and the frequency at which your business will use it. Businesses that print thousands of documents per month may value a machine with high printing speed and durability. A printer with high image quality and four ink wells may be more important for companies printing more colorful documents and images. 

Consider these factors before purchasing your next office printer.

Functionality

Most businesses opt for multifunction printers, or systems that can print, copy, scan and fax. Why? Small and medium-sized businesses need a printing solution that reflects themselves: efficient, versatile and reliable.

Budget

Size, imaging, speed and additional features affecting the price of a printer. When determining your budget for a new printer, it’s important to understand that the upfront costs could be compounded by the price of replacing ink. It’s common for inexpensive printers to have costly ink replacement fees. The reason: manufacturers make their money that way.

Leasing printers has become a popular option for businesses. Monthly leasing costs are easier to factor into a budget than the one-time cost of purchasing a multifunction printer. Leasing also allows companies to update their equipment as printer technology advances.

Quality

Your office printer will likely use an inkjet or laser printer. Inkjet printers use ink and are best for low-volume printing, while laser printers use toner and are suited for high-volume printing. Whichever you use, you want professional print quality. Both are measured in dots per inch — or DPI. Laser printers usually have between 600 to 1,200 DPI, while inkjet printer resolutions usually begin at 1,200 DPI.

It’s also worth checking if you can use third-party ink cartridges for your printer and if refilling cartridges is an option. Be aware that using unapproved ink cartridges might void your warranty.

Speed

If your office frequently prints reports or documents with multiple pages, you’ll want to pay attention to the printing speed on your new machine, measured in pages per minute — or PPM. Though printers will have slight variance in PPM for images and text, the measurement will allow you to determine what best fits your business’ needs.

Wireless Access

Most offices have on-the-go employees who want to print from laptops or cellphones. Printers with wireless or Bluetooth access provide more functionality. The feature also allows the machine to access a document management system. Users can use the printer to access electronically stored files without having to send the files through a computer.

 To learn more about print and technology solutions that best fit your organization’s needs, contact us here.