A natural or manufactured disaster can hurt a business in several ways:
- Its location could be rendered uninhabitable.
- It may have to re-acquire physical assets such as furniture and hardware.
- Its proprietary data could be destroyed.
Of these setbacks, the third one is the worst. Most companies lease office space or own real estate that has disaster insurance. But it’s impossible to ensure data in the same way that you would a tangible asset. So the only way to ensure that disaster doesn’t destroy proprietary information forever is to store a copy of the data at another location – the first step in what is known as disaster recovery planning.
Disaster Recovery Basics
According to business continuity professionals, up to 80 percent of businesses never fully recover from a significant data loss. As a result, many companies go out of business in the months following the loss. This statistic demonstrates the importance of proprietary data and the need to implement a disaster recovery plan with an IT Companies specializing in disaster recovery.
Developing an initiative for a disaster recovery plan is the first phase of business continuity planning. If necessary, an IT professional services provider can help build internal support for the plan. Although businesses need different types of plans, each plan has three essential elements.
Offsite Data Storage
There are plenty of web-based options for offsite data storage. Ideally, a business should store its data with an IT professional services provider that offers disaster recovery planning. This will expedite migrating the data onto new hardware as the business moves to an alternative location in the wake of the disaster.
Emergency Hardware Deployment
As mentioned above, stored data must be migrated onto new hardware. An IT professional services company specializing in data recovery planning will provide the hardware and deploy SQM Club it to the secondary business location so the customer can have its network up and running within 48 hours of the disaster.
Identifying a Secondary Business Location
An IT professional services provider will recommend a secondary business location if the customer has difficulty selecting one. The service provider will also provide temporary staff for some of the customer’s employees who are indisposed.
Conclusion
Developing and testing a disaster recovery plan can take months, so starting the planning process now. If your business needs assistance developing a data recovery plan, it should consult with an IT professional services company specializing in disaster recovery today.