Is Your Business Prepared for Data Recovery?
Four things you should consider in your strategy
In early October 2021, a technical error led to an outage at Facebook and its Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram apps. For six hours, billions of users around the world had no access to their personal data.
At the same time, millions of businesses who rely on Facebook to advertise, showcase their company and connect with customers online, suddenly lost a major share of their web and social media presence and all the data associated with it.
The business world can learn a lot from an outage—albeit temporary—of this magnitude. One of the key lessons—to borrow from the old saying—is that failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
In the case of Facebook and its related apps, the October outage was tied to human error, but data loss can happen in several ways, including ransomware attacks, natural disasters or equipment failure.
The ability for a business to recover lost data can mean the difference between staying in operation or shutting down. A robust data recovery strategy serves to shield a business from human-caused mistakes, maintain compliance, overcome IT failure or pull through a disaster such as a power outage, fire or flood.
Simply put, businesses have many “mission critical” functions that rely on access to that data. Imagine having no way to use your customer databases, accounting records, shipping and logistical information, user application data. When the lights go out—even temporarily—not having that information can seriously disable business operations.
Take a moment to consider the impacts—and if you’re searching for a data backup or recovery solution for your business, here are some important points to consider.
Enterprise recovery is meaningless without backups
To overcome the potential failures of data recovery, businesses must ensure backups are done regularly and done properly. Decisions made about backups include what to backup, how often and where the backup data is stored. Offsite storage of backup data is essential for any business, and cloud computing has made enterprise backups easier to conduct and manage with fewer dollars. Encourage employees to upload their work to servers for backup rather than leaving it on their respective laptop or computer device with no backup protocols in place.
Think disaster, then plan
Disasters happen suddenly. Disasters can happen naturally—like a tornado or flood—or devised by malicious actors, such as with cyberattacks. Recovery of data for a disaster requires planning, much of it being fulfilled as part of normal business operations. A proper disaster recovery plan will identify the data critical to the continuity of the business and take appropriate action to protect its integrity. While disasters cannot be avoided, the impact of disasters on a business can.
Professional recovery services are worth the time and money
Recovery professionals dedicate themselves to understanding how lost data can impact a business and what solutions should be in place. Such services are inexpensive given the potential financial impact of not having the right data available. Services can range from consulting on the in-house plan to complete development and management of backup and recovery services for the business. Leaning on an expert allows you to focus on your business.
Avoid recovery concerns by using cloud backups
Cloud-based apps and services allow businesses to store data offsite automatically. Using critical applications through the cloud ensures that data is available at all times and under any conditions or location. Since data is stored on a virtual device, physical damage is no longer an issue. Virtualization reduces the potential for logical damage as well, as data is often replicated across several virtual machines.
The goal of data recovery is to ensure the business continues by making critical data available. The longer data is unavailable, the more the business stands to lose. Particularly regarding disaster recovery, businesses benefit from solutions and processes that reduce the time loss between when the data is lost and when the data is available again.
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