Even on a good day, being a business owner is challenging. Apart from dealing with and effectively solving multiple problems, you also need the foresight to arm your business with the right tools and solutions to tackle any issues that might arise.
One issue you need to prioritize is data loss or data corruption. Loosing data or simply having corrupted data can cause downtime, which will lead to a dip in productivity, or worse, cause your business to grind to a screeching halt! Data loss or data corruption could happen due to many reasons, such as:
- Natural disasters
- Hardware failure
- Human error
- Software corruption
- Computer viruses
- Malicious attacks
- Ransomware
Adopting a comprehensive backup and business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy is the best way to tackle this problem.
What is a comprehensive BCDR strategy?
A comprehensive BCDR strategy is a set of processes and techniques used to help an organization recover from a disaster and continue (or resume) routine business operations. It combines the roles and functions of IT and business in the aftermath of a disaster. A robust strategy:
Protects all systems, devices, and workloads
Managing all systems, devices and workloads efficiently, securely, and consistently can be challenging. Mistakes, errors, mishaps and outright failures across backup and recovery systems could happen at any time, leading to severe downtime or other costly business consequences. That is why it’s essential to have a reliable and secure solution to back up and protect business data as well as business systems, devices, and workloads.
Ensures the integrity, availability, and accessibility of data
The complexity of IT, network and data environments that include multiple sites — cloud, on-premises and remote — makes monitoring and protection difficult. When data is correctly maintained, it negatively affects the integrity, availability and accessibility of information and all IT network assets. That is why it’s a best practice to simultaneously deploy tools or systems that cover all IT and network infrastructure (remote, cloud and on-site) with the same level of protection and security.
Enables business resilience and continuity.
A comprehensive and realistically achievable backup and BCDR strategy prioritizes, facilitates and ensures the continuity of business operations. It represents a business’ resiliency against downtime or data loss incidents. A recent study showed that 60% of businesses that were successfully breached were forced to close within 9 months. Thus, a company’s ability to recover after a disaster could be the difference between continued operations and a permanently closed sign on the door.
Prioritizes critical protection and security requirements against internal and external risks.
No backup or BCDR solution can be effective if your business does not proactively identify and mitigate internal and external risks. You need tools that focus on internal and external threats through constant monitoring, alerting and tactical defense to empower your backup and BCDR strategy.
Manages visibility and unauthorized access and fulfills data retention requirements.
Your business data must never be visible to every employee in the same way. Businesses should be adopting policies and security tools to ensure that an employee can access only data essential to completing their tasks. Employee access must be identified, regularly reviewed and, when necessary, blocked or removed immediately. This is crucial for the success of backups and BCDR and for maintaining compliance with regulatory mandates related to data protection and retention.
Comprehensive backup and BCDR for your business
In today’s data driven business environment, adopting a comprehensive backup and BCDR strategy is not an option but a necessity. Even one severe data loss incident or disruption could open the gates for your competitors to eat into your profits and customer base.
You must do everything possible to bring all the right tools and strategies together so your business can operate seamlessly, even in the face of chaos. Are you ready to approach the concept of comprehensive backup and BCDR practically?
While this may seem overwhelming, the good news is, a well-established BCDR plan is not as difficult as you might think. At Summit, we can help you design, implement, and maintain a comprehensive and secure Business Continuity and Disaster recovery plan and the tools and policies that go with it.
Contact us today to learn more.
