Why Businesses Should Have a Disaster Recovery Plan

What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan is a business plan that prepares your company for an IT disaster. These plans are designed to get your business up and running quickly. Disaster recovery planning is only a part of the overall goal of business continuity, and it applies to any organization that relies on an IT infrastructure to function. Its goal is to bring vital IT support services back online. Here’s why your Des Moines business should have a disaster recovery plan. Read more

Why Your Business Needs a Disaster Recovery Strategy

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.

Why Your Business Needs a Disaster Recovery Strategy

Is your business ready if the unthinkable happens?  The statistics suggest that the likelihood that your business could survive a disaster is slim. In fact, 58% of small businesses don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place to protect their data if a disaster strikes or if their information is breached. This lack of planning can be catastrophic to businesses of all sizes, affecting credibility and even the longevity of the company.

Here are five reasons your business needs a disaster recovery strategy.

  1. Stuff happens
    Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters can damage your physical office location and wipe out your data. Computers crash. Hackers can infiltrate your system. Software gets corrupted.The biggest threat to your data, however, is the carefully cultivated team of professionals you hired to make your business great. Your team edits, deletes, and overwrites files every time they are on their computers, and IBM reports that more than half of all data loss comes from human error. Even if you emphasize being diligent about data protection to your team, people make mistakes and your business needs to be prepared for the worst.
  2. Compliance regulations
    Having credit card information, certain customer data, HIPAA-protected medical information, or other personally identifiable information in your system makes you liable to protect such confidential data. You are responsible to protect that data to the point that you may have a legal obligation to do so. Forrester’s Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark Survey reports that 65% of all businesses have compliance requirements, and a disaster recovery plan can help you abide by such regulations.
  3. Downtime costs you money
    Losing important data equals lost productivity. No business wants to pay their team to recreate documents that already exist – it’s like paying them twice for the same outcome. But that’s if they are capable of reproducing them. For some industries, lost documents simply can’t be replaced without starting over completely. Not only will your employees not be able to access the information they need to do their jobs, your customers may not be able to either. If your clients can’t wait for you to get things back up to speed, you may lose their business.
  4. You may not be able to recover everything
    Sometimes, you can get your systems up and working again in a way that makes things appear that you’re back to normal. However, even if you can get your systems back up and running, you may not get all your data back. Can you afford to lose all the information you’ve spent years collecting?
  5. It can cost you everything
    If the first four reasons haven’t convinced you, here are two scary statistics that should concern every business:

    • 60% of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that suffer a disaster shut down within half a year
    • 93% of business that lose their data storage for two weeks file for bankruptcy within the next year

If your business does not have a disaster recovery plan, you are putting yourself at risk.  Contact us today to learn more about disaster recovery options for your business. We will conduct a risk assessment and give you specific recommendations to help you protect your data and your business.

Save Time, Space, and Money with Digital Archiving

There’s no doubt that digital archiving saves you time, space, and money. It is effectively a death sentence for maintaining paper stacks and managing files in a physical location. With digital archiving, you don’t have to store thousands of documents in boxes in storage or sift through 10 years of files to find a specific piece of paper.

Digital archiving allows you to attain greater convenience for keeping client records and tracking business information safely. Technology has changed the game for businesses. No longer must you rely on outdated, labor-intensive business practices that take up time. Instead, companies can easily manage their records over the Internet through the cloud. This helps eliminate the costs and hassles of archiving records physically, while increasing ease of accessibility.

If your business is struggling to maintain its records, then you should consider digital archiving.  Not only will it help improve efficiency and accuracy, but you will gain the following benefits:

• Greater document security
• Cloud-based storage negates the need for copies
• Easily accessible data from any place at any time
• Enhanced compliance

With digital archiving, the days of drowning in piles of paperwork are over. This modern equivalent of recordkeeping provides a scalable, affordable, sustainable solution to your filing needs.

Implementing digital archiving

A lot of businesses are keen on the idea of digital archiving, but most of them don’t really know how to go about it. If your goal is to reduce the amount of paper your office uses, consider the following beginning steps to digital archiving:

• Acquire a digital storage option that offers high server capacity
• Consider scanning options that will allow you to properly archive every document digitally
• Adopt a document management system that will do all of the hard-work for you
• Create electronic signatures for employees to access the documents virtually

For help following the above mentioned steps to adopt digital archiving for your business, contact Infomax today.

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery – What’s the Difference?

When a computer glitch strikes and you get the “Blue Screen of Death,” your heart leaps into your throat. Then you remember your automated backup program. Whew, everything is safe.

But is it?

Backups can give us a sense of security, yet there’s a significant difference between backing up your data and recovering it after a disaster. Despite their distinctions, both are critical for a healthy information technology system.

Data backup is a standard and sometimes simple process—saving a copy (or multiple copies) of information in case the original or working copy has a problem. Backup may occur as a process automated by software, a physical action required of a human being, or as part of Managed IT or cloud services. Backed-up data might be stored in an external hard drive on your desktop, on CD- or DVD-ROM, on an offsite server, or even with a cloud-based service. Regular data backup is an essential part of business, often done on a daily basis to keep copies of records.

But data backup alone isn’t enough. Backed-up data is like a parachute: good to have, but not very helpful if you can’t use it! A recovery plan is the parachute pack and deployment system. A tested, staged, and properly deployable pack is mandatory if you hope to survive disaster.

Disaster recovery includes the processes and people that make backed-up data usable. Since disasters happen at any time, it’s essential that your recovery system be ready and available whenever needed, and your staff must know how to activate that system. Disaster recovery is about the outcome.

There are numerous failure points (human or software), and faith in untested systems can provide a false sense of security. Moreover, everything must be accessible when you need it. Do you know who to call? How to get your data back into use?

Using a Managed Service Provider (MSP) can be a critical part of a robust backup and disaster recovery system. Through service-level agreements, your provider becomes an extension of your company, but one with industry-specific expertise and tested recovery systems. A relationship with a Managed Service Provider also functions across your organization, rather than through isolated departments or individual sets of files.

To make sure you’re prepared to bounce back if the worst ever happens, contact Infomax about backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Why Backup & Disaster Recovery Are Essential

Have you taken the time to plan for the worst? Everyone likes to think they are immune from disastrous situations like fire, flood, or security breaches. But the truth is, without a backup and recovery plan, your business is at risk.

Backup and recovery is a crucial aspect of any company’s business model. It simply refers to strategically protecting your business documents and programs from any type of data loss, and developing a plan to retrieve or reconstitute files in the event they are lost or destroyed. Typically, backup and recovery focuses its plan around electronic databases that are networked across your organization.

Here are a few reasons to design and implement a solid backup and recovery system into your business plan ASAP.

Preemptive protection – A backup and disaster recovery strategy literally safeguards your livelihood. Would your business survive a week if a flood destroyed all of your computers, servers, and hardcopy documents? How would you get back on your feet? By working with a trusted IT provider, like Infomax, you can determine a plan that best fits your company’s needs before disaster strikes. That way, if and when some unforeseen disaster happens you’ll be able to get your business back up and running in a timely manner.

Guaranteed coverage – If you are put in the position of having to rely on your backup and recovery plan, you can lean on your services provider to get you up and running quickly while you deal with the other inevitable aspects of clean-up, like rethinking deadlines or contacting your insurance company. Whether you’re a mom-and-pop shop or enterprise-level business, your IT services provider will ensure that all aspects of your business are included in your backup and recovery plan. For example, Infomax will back up your data automatically through cloud computing every 15 minutes, guaranteeing you uninterrupted workflows in almost any emergency situation.

Peace of mind – Let’s face it, you’ve got enough to worry about. Your day-to-day tasks can be overwhelming enough, without having to consider how your data would survive a disaster. Working with an IT service provider to determine a plan that works for your business will ensure that you have one less thing to stress about, giving you peace of mind when it comes to your company’s data.

Interested in having your data backed up every 15 minutes? Contact Infomax today to get your backup and recovery plan started.