Most successful organizations take business continuity planning seriously. Even if a business plan is fail-proof, it is still vulnerable to catastrophes like natural disasters and cyber attacks. Backup disaster plans help ensure that in case of a worst case scenario, a business’ assets are protected and the service offered is not interrupted. A good disaster recovery plan is multi-faceted to cover several key vulnerabilities.
Improved Cyber Security
It’s not a stretch to say the greatest threat to our modern age is the threat of cyber attacks. There are nearly 17,000 cyber attacks on businesses every year. Many large, sophisticated and otherwise invincible companies have been compromised by cyber attacks. In fact, 43% of all companies have already fallen victim to cyber attacks and that number is rising.
With every cyber attack, a company’s reputation is damaged, they lose productivity and revenue, and have to pay heavy costs for forensics and technical support. If the compromise was due to any negligence, they’ll be subject to compliance regulatory fines. For this reason, cyber-savvy companies invest in robust cyber security systems.
Strong Physical Security
An effective security system involves both IT security and protecting the physical infrastructure with measures such as camera systems. Some industries, such as utilities and hospitals, are required to protect the people who depend on them by keeping their critical assets in locked, enclosed area that is constantly monitored with a camera system. A constantly monitored camera system ensures that physical assets are guarded and security breaches are caught immediately so that damage can be minimized.
The Advantages of Cloud Storage
Cloud storage means that a company’s data is stored remotely, often in multiple physical locations and accessible through a network (commonly the internet). Because the data is stored offsite and repetitiously, cloud storage offers heightened data backup, a big safety net for a company. In the United States alone, there are 140,000 hard drive crashes every week. If a company does not have a data backup plan like cloud storage, a hard drive crashing could mean the loss of valuable data and an interruption in the service they provide.
Uninterruptible Power Supply System
An uninteruptible power supply system (UPS) is a backup battery source in case of a power outage. In a recent study, 80% of data center managers said that having an outage at a data center costs the company more than $50,000 per hour of downtime! According to The IT Process Institute, the average data center outage takes about 3 hours to resolve. Having a UPS system that backs up a data center could save a company hundreds of thousands of dollars in the case of an outage.
