Tag Archives: backup disaster recovery

The Misconceptions of Backup Disaster Recovery

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There is a misconception that backup disasters don’t happen very often or, when they do, that they are easy to recover from.

Whether you’re working in a small or large business, it’s always essential to have a contingency plan. Between natural disasters that could damage the business itself, or man-made incidents that may cause a data breach, always be prepared for emergencies. With that said, while having a backup disaster recovery plan is important, you need to have a full understanding of it as well. Too often in the business world, there are numerous misunderstandings that companies may have about recovering from disaster, among other things as well. When thinking of ways to plan and recover from disaster, here are some common misconceptions. With that said, these should also give you a better understanding of what the true facts are.

Misconception #1: The Plan Doesn’t Need to Be Tested 

Among businesses, a common misunderstanding is that the backup disaster recovery plan, doesn’t needed to be tested out. This misconception is quite common among small businesses, especially when it comes to potential attacks from hackers. Not only are many under the impression that large businesses are an easier target, but also that big breaches don’t happen to companies like theirs. However, this is far from the truth. Statistics even show that 70 percent of all information breaches happen against companies with less than 100 employees.

As for large businesses, the plan should only be used and tested when an emergency happens, right? While this is true to an extent, also remember that the business world is unpredictable. You may not need to use your plan until years down the road, but an emergency might also happen sooner than you think. Either way, testing out your backup disaster recovery plan is always important. With that said, testing it out on a regular basis helps you to make any changes/updates as well. While your plan may be foolproof as of now, the current one may not be so helpful to you if an incident were to happen years down the road.

Misconception #2: My Business Can Be Easily Recovered 

Another misconception among organizations, is that they don’t need a backup plan, because their business can be easily recovered. However, this isn’t necessarily true. After all, natural disasters might not only cause a loss of data (such as a simple power outage), but they can severely damage the workplace as well. In some ways, though, man-made disasters are even worse. Aside from causing a loss of information, a breach in security could ruin your business reputation as well. In the long run, this would make it extremely difficult to recover.

For example, let’s say you had potential customers who had heard of a recent data breach in your company. It’s very likely they’ll look for business elsewhere. After all, they’re not going to risk having their information compromised.

However, out of all the disasters that could make it difficult to recover, ransomware is certainly the worst. Though it’s not a breach in information, it is a malicious tool in which a cyber criminal locks all files on your computer. Not only are you forced to pay a ransom, but failure to do so will cause all of your files to be deleted. Considering how ransomware is becoming harder to crack, and the hackers actually go through with their word, recovering from the incident is nearly impossible.

Misconception #3: My Employees Don’t Factor In

One final misconception among businesses is that employees aren’t a factor when creating a disaster recovery plan. After all, as long as you have things planned out, that’s all that matters, right? Remember, however, that being successful in the workplace requires teamwork. Between training your employees on what to do in case of emergencies, and educating them on the types of disasters, they are a crucial part of making sure your organization recovers.

For more information, contact us today at SystemsNet.

Backup Disaster Recovery: Concerning Questions

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Backing up your data is a crucial part of any data security plan.

Regardless of whether you’re working in a small or large business, there are several things you should concern yourself with in the workplace. Besides knowing how you’re going to plan ahead for the future, you should also be thinking of ways to train your employees in case of emergencies. Speaking of emergencies, they’re more common in the workplace than one would think. Whether a business has become victim to the latest hacking attempt, or the organization was damaged in a storm, having a backup disaster recovery plan is important. Of course, though, what are some questions you should be asking yourself? In relation to your recovery plan, here are a few concerning questions to keep in mind.

What Information Needs to Be Backed Up?

When creating a disaster recovery plan, it’s important to consider what data you should be backing up. When preparing for emergencies, many businesses simply store all the information they can, even the data that’s unimportant. While there’s nothing particularly wrong with this, it’s still unnecessary and can create problems in the long run. For example, let’s say one of the devices being used to store information was a USB flash drive. Despite the device’s ability to contain gigabytes of data, you may find you’ll run out of room fast if you try to store everything on it. Be smart about the data you plan to keep, while discarding anything that’s unneeded as well.

Lastly, you should always do a double-check when considering what information needs to be backed up on your computer. After all, you never want to accidentally discard anything of value. For example, there might be a project or piece of data you think isn’t needed anymore, but it may be of use again sooner than you think. Overall, concerning yourself with what information needs to be backed up, is an important question in regards to a disaster recovery plan.

Will I Need to Make Any Changes? 

Whether your employees are coming and going, or the policies in your workplace change, the business world is always changing. With that said, the same applies to your disaster recovery plan. Though you may be preparing for an emergency now, you may not need to take action until years down the road. When planning for disaster in your business, don’t just think in the “here and now”, but consider the future as well. Where do you see your business five years from now? Also, how can you use those predictions to make sure your plan runs smoothly? These are some important questions you should be asking yourself.

What Disasters Am I Prepared For?

When most businesses think of the word “disaster”, a tornado that destroys the entire workplace may come to mind. While it’s true that many businesses may suffer loss due to the weather or even a power outage, a disaster isn’t always because of natural conditions. For example, what if a fire accidentally started in your office, tarnishing your files? As a more common example, however, your company could experience a huge loss of information in a data breach. Back to main question, what disasters are you prepared for? When creating a recovery plan, it’s important to take every threat into consideration. Focusing on one type of disaster while ignoring the other, will leave you unprepared for what’s to come. When planning for data breaches or attacks from hackers, for example, you should think of ways to tighten your security. As for natural disasters, you may want to think about transferring your information to another organization. Better yet, you could set up multiple business locations as well.

For more information, contact us today at SystemsNet.

Backup Disaster Recovery: The Biggest Risks Today as Incentive to Prepare

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Backup disaster recovery–no matter what the cause–can be devastating for your business without proper preparation.

Backup disaster recovery is more necessary than ever as cyber threats become more prevalent and insidious. This doesn’t mean it’s strictly limited to natural disasters since human beings can cause just as many problems. Nevertheless, the combined threats permeating cyberspace are at red alert level now.

For your business, not having some form of backup in today’s times becomes the worst type of risk. Entrepreneur recently reminded that 40 to 60 percent of all small businesses don’t survive disasters. All of this comes from lack of evaluation on what makes a business vulnerable.

It’s easy to get complacent if nothing ever happened to your business in the past. What didn’t happen maybe five or ten years ago could easily happen now, especially newer threats you’re not aware exist.

So what are some common threats that could threaten your business data? With proper backup tools, none of these have to make you worry.

The Current Threat of Ransomware

This could soon become the worst cyber threat in the world. We’ve written about it before in our blogs, but we’ve seen an increase in ransomware since the first of the year. It’s been cited recently as one of the worst-case-scenarios in business disasters.

What makes this threat so bad is it’s so easy to catch if your employees inadvertently click a link in an email. Those behind ransomware frequently create convincing emails that appear to come from government agencies or superiors in a company.

Once the ransomware gets into your system, a hacker can shut down your entire network and demand a ransom to get your files back.

While some companies get their data returned after paying a ransom, not all do. It’s better to create reliable backup systems to prepare for this growing problem. With proper IT management, you can succeed, especially through the cloud.

Natural Disasters

Just about anything can happen in the way of natural disasters, and it goes far beyond hurricanes or earthquakes. Now freak winter storms or even floods can happen in places you wouldn’t expect. Your own business location may have typically calm weather, then suddenly experience something on a biblical level.

These events could wipe out your business in an instant. Having an on-site server could mean your entire business data disappearing forever. Even some other forms of backup may not have complete reliability, especially using something outdated like tapes.

Once again, with more reliable backup services from quality IT management, you can retrieve your files the same day without having to wait for hours. Through the cloud, you can access everything anywhere you find an Internet connection.

Human Error or Deliberate Disasters

While nature can always wreak havoc on a business, so can human beings. Sometimes a disaster may occur strictly because an employee accidentally deletes important data. Despite all the technological advances out there, it’s still far too easy to press one button wrong that eliminates entire databases.

Other times, employees can do things out of spite due to dissatisfaction in their jobs. When this happens, it can bring even more damage and cost you a fortune in downtime.

Small businesses experiencing downtime could have costs up to $427 per minute, so it’s time to prepare for any occurrence. Because you may have employees numbering in the hundreds, it only takes one of them to create a major problem accidentally or intentionally.

Through superior BDR systems, this kind of disaster won’t leave you hanging. What’s important is finding an IT provider that’s reliable and affordable.

Let us provide the reliable backup disaster recovery system you need here at SystemsNet.

Contact us to find out more about our comprehensive IT services.

Backup Disaster Recovery Planning: The Basics

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Having a backup disaster recovery plan in place is crucial to the long-term success and survival of your business.

A backup disaster recovery plan is crucial to the survival of a business. The odds of a business surviving a major disaster without a plan are pretty low, and it’s impossible to know when a disaster will strike. It’s the unpredictability that makes disasters the most dangerous. If something terrible happened tomorrow, would you be ready? If not, you better get started. Here are some important things to consider as you create your backup disaster recovery plan.

Data recovery

One of the primary focuses of your backup disaster recovery plan should pertain to how you will recover your data. Where is your data right now? How will it be restored to your system and whose job will it be? Does that person know how to do that? Do they need practice? This is also a really good time to take a look at how you backup your data. Having a plan to recover data is pointless if the backup data doesn’t exist. Make sure that your backups are current, and saved in several reasonable places. At least one copy should be off-site in case of a natural disaster. Make sure that you do have easy access to the data as well.

Communication

The quality and efficiency of the communication during a disaster has a huge effect on how everything turns out. It’s important to make sure that your disaster recovery plan includes specifics about how communication should happen during a disaster. Will a chain of command be formed? Will certain people have certain jobs? What happens if a part of the plan goes wrong? The key to a strong plan is to think of everything, or at least as much as possible.

Education and practice

A disaster recovery plan is completely useless if nobody knows what to do. Make sure to educate your employees about the details of the plan. Each employee should, at the very least, know exactly what they are responsible for. This will look different for every company. A great way to make sure that everyone knows what’s going on is a series of seminars or classes, but memos might work better for some. Just do whatever works best for your staff.

Once everybody knows what they’re doing, do a couple of practice rounds. Run through different parts of the plan. This will be a good chance to catch any mistakes and find out if someone isn’t quite sure what to do. Believe it or not, the practice rounds are almost as important as the training sessions.

Testing

You can consider the practice rounds to be tests also if you’d like, but it’s important that you have a chance to evaluate the recovery plan. There will probably be holes here and there. Do you have too many people doing that, but not enough doing this? Maybe there’s a task that needs a certain skill set that isn’t available in the staff that have been assigned to it. Using the results of the test runs, tweak your plan to make it exactly what your company needs.

Continuity

The goal of all of this is to maintain continuity as much as possible. Of course, immediately after the disaster, you’ll probably have to close, but you want to open again as soon as possible. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that you need to be able to take care of the customers that are depending on you. A lack of continuity is the fastest way to lose customers.

Have more questions about your backup disaster recovery plan? Contact us. We’re happy to answer all of your questions and help you with anything that you need.