If you are a rapidly growing company, your IT systems and personnel likely have a massive workload just trying to keep up ⎯⎯disaster recovery (DR) is probably not first on the list. You’ve likely taken some measures like implementing cloud based hosting or backup, but have you truly accounted for every critical incident that could impact your technology and systems? In an environment where growing profits and scalability are top of mind, the last thing you want is to have a setback happen such as a breach, power outage, or network failure. So yes, it matters to have a complete DR plan and program in place to protect the infrastructure that supports your company’s people, processes, and profits.
The cost of the loss
The 2014 benchmark survey conducted by the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council found that data loss happens more frequently than we think. According to their survey results, over a third of all businesses lost one or more critical applications for a few hours over the previous year. One in five lost one or more critical applications for a period of a few days. When it comes to complete data center loss, 25 percent reported they experienced this for a period of a few hours to a few days. In dollars, these outages cost companies from $50,000 to over $5 million.
Companies are not prepared
Maybe it is because so many business leaders don’t understand the risks involved, but the same survey also showed that a majority of companies don’t have a trustworthy IT disaster recovery plan in place. Over 60 percent admitted that they have no documented plan for disaster recovery, while 40 percent of those that do have one in place claim that it failed when called into action.
What do you have in place?
The key to surviving a disruption in your company’s IT infrastructure is to get essential services restored as quickly as possible. This is exactly what your IT disaster recovery plan is meant to do. It outlines the steps your team needs to get your business operating again. Sadly, in the instances where it does fail, the program likely overlooks a critical factor⎯⎯people.
Many companies view their disaster recovery plan as nothing more than an item they can cross off a compliance checklist. But, this isn’t enough if you want to see your company through a disruption. Instead, your disaster recovery program needs to include steps to make sure that your team is prepared should something happen. You need to make sure that key personnel go through regular training and recovery exercises to ensure they know how to react and are comfortable with what they are responsible for if systems go down or data is lost. You need to have a plan in place⎯⎯part of that plan needs to be a strategy for guiding employees through the steps they need to take when systems are disrupted. It’s not just having a plan that matters⎯⎯how you put that plan into practice that matters even more.
Things are going to happen that disrupt continuity, but the impact on your company, who’s already facing enough challenges, can be minimized. With a strategic and tactical IT disaster recovery plan and program in place, you can ensure that you always have the IT systems, infrastructure, services, and data your company needs to keep growing.