Critical components for business continuity
As a technology partner, we focus a whole lot on disaster recovery and business continuity.
Andromeda helps our clients combat data breaches and other mishaps with smart security prevention but every business remains vulnerable to human error and other unexpected incidents.
The only way to truly protect yourself from disaster - natural and man-made - is a professional disaster recovery and business continuity plan. When building your plan, we believe three components are absolute must haves.
Your plan must consider recovery point and time objectives
Disasters occur in many shapes and sizes: server crashes, deleted files, fires, floods and of course cybercrime.
You must ask yourself two important questions in regards to business continuity:
1. How much data can you afford to lose? The industry term for this is Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
2. How much time can you afford to lose; this is commonly known in Business Continuity as Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Your IT partner's ultimate goal is to provide you optimal RPO and RTO while keeping your solution cost effective.
Your plan must have multiple storage locations (preferably off-site and on-site)
Backups come in different forms. Whether your backup is a physical backup (kept on-site or off-site), cloud based or some hybrid, it's important that there are multiple storage locations.
We strongly recommend a solution with the ability to backup both on-site and to the cloud. Not only that, but it is imperative that your cloud backups are geographically disperse. This strategy allows you peace of mind, added protection and added security. If you put all of your data in one location, you run the risk of failure or corruption. For example, if you are backing up your data regularly to an off-site drive or storage device, what happens if that device gets damaged, lost or stolen?
Your plan must provide a way to access and use your data after incident
Many business owners believe that having a copy of their data backed up is enough. While the data is important, having a way to access and make use of said data is the big difference between a simple backup plan and business continuity/disaster recovery.
Imagine your server crashes ... do you have a way to make use of your backups? Can you run your organization from the cloud? Do you have a device on site that can run a virtual server?
Without a device on site or a cloud backup, you will most likely not be able to make use of your data.
I don't have to remind you - Time Is Money. It can take days and in some cases even weeks to recover from hardware failure, cybercrime or other incident. Without multiple restore options that make your data usable, your backups won't get you by. In summary: disaster happens. Whether it is the latest ransomware attack, an unfortunate leak in your office, human error or natural disaster, having a professional disaster recovery plan is key. After 23 years, we've seen it all. Our mission is to help customers like you prevent incident, prepare for the unthinkable and overcome the unexpected.
Give us a call and let's get to work. Or visit www.WeNetwork.com/Offer for more info.
• Jeff Borello is president and CEO of Andromeda Technology Solutions in Lockport.