Data loss is a fact of life in the IT world. Data corruption, hard drive failures, power interruptions, and even the dreaded “operator error” can all put your priceless data at risk. Any sane business has a comprehensive data backup and recovery plan in place. With a regular disaster recovery testing plan in place your business should be good to go, right?
Not necessarily. We, as humans, really hate thinking about worst-case scenarios. But that is the core principle of disaster recovery planning. Your plan may be all ready to go for a user-deleted directory, a hard drive crash, or a temporary power interruption. But, what if something worse should come up?
The question is not that far-fetched. From forest fires in California to Colorado, to hurricanes on the Gulf and East Coasts, we are seeing an unprecedented number of events that are causing significant interruptions to businesses across the country. In 2020 alone there were multiple-day power interruptions from Texas to New England. If you can’t afford for your business to be at a standstill for days at a time, you need to consider off-site backup and cloud integration services.
The basic principle is simple: you need to identify those systems that you absolutely must have access to to keep running on a daily basis. You should not only be backing those up locally, but remotely as well—in a geographic region that is unlikely to be affected by any event that might cripple your area. Located in Texas? Maybe host your mission-critical data in the Pacific Northwest.
Now, in the event of a multi-day interruption, all your business requires is a laptop and an internet connection. Once you have gotten yourself and your staff to safety, you at least have the ability to maintain your mission critical operations, as well as inform customers and suppliers about the status of your business.
Off-site backups are a form of insurance – you try not to think too hard about the circumstances that would require their implementation, but you’ll be glad you have them when the time comes. Develop an off-site addendum to your disaster recovery plan today.
The network and security support experts with NSC Information Technology Group can help you create a disaster recovery plan to ensure your business will survive no matter what may occur. In the event of an emergency, we can also help restore your business to working order.