What’s the Key to Your Business Recovering From a Disaster?

When you first opened the doors of your business, you were probably preoccupied with thoughts of running said business. What you probably hadn’t spared much thought to, however, was the prospect of it all going wrong. Fast-forward to now: how prepared are you to deal with an impending crisis that is poised to wipe out all you’ve worked for? This exact scenario is why it is crucial for every business to have a business continuity plan prepared, as well as a data recovery strategy set up and ready.

A business continuity plan is exactly what it sounds like: a plan to ensure the continuity of a business. Disasters, by nature, don’t serve as an environment in which much work can be done as it would normally. In fact, a disaster usually prevents work from being done at all, both during the event itself and in the time afterward, as this will likely be spent taking inventory the damage done.

However, the damage done to your business will likely be much more extensive than one might first assume.

First, let’s consider what is usually lost to the disaster itself. Workstations and other pieces of IT infrastructure aren’t the most resilient in the face of a natural force, and will almost assuredly take on some damage. This damage can lead to data loss and downtime, a killer combination for any business to face. In fact, a data loss event will often cause the affected company to close its doors for good. The combined impact of the disaster itself and the following issues often prove to be too crippling for an unprepared business to recover from.

The key to surviving a disaster is to be prepared to survive that disaster. This is where the importance of proactively compiling a business continuity plan is clear, as is maintaining a data recovery solution that aligns with certain practices.

Many people keep a spare key to their house, but not many keep it on the same key ring as the original. Keeping the original and the spare keys together defeats the purpose of having a spare at all. Your data is the same way--if your original data and your backup are kept together, your backup is liable to be destroyed along with the data it is meant to preserve. We recommend that you instead maintain a few isolated backups, configured to take incremental snapshots of your system and house them in an off-site location.

At SCW, we can help you manage your business continuity planning with a variety of our services. Give us a call at (509) 534-1530 today.