Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Distributed Workforce Recovery

Disaster Recovery is one of many IT facets that might seem increasingly more complicated while you’re remote. It can easily be forgotten in this ever-changing pandemic time but can be one of the most detrimental to neglect.  

What could go wrong? 

Outages are inevitable. A 2019 LogicMonitor study reported that 96% of organizations have experienced at least one outage in the past three years and 95 percent had experienced at least one brownout. How intrusive of an event can your business withstand without significant impact? It’s important to determine how long your business can afford to be down without detrimental, long-term effects.  Any of the following could potentially affect your business.

Natural Events  

Any number of natural events can cause an outage and unexpected downtime. Hurricane Harvey caused significant downtime for businesses across the Gulf Coast region. Colocations can catch fire or suffer major power outages. An outage is always a concern when any disastrous natural event occurs.  

Human Error 

Many companies don’t realize that 43% of cyber breaches are caused by internal actors. Of those, 21% came from unintentional actions by employees, according to Intel. Cybersecurity Awareness Training helps your employees spot phishing and other types of social engineering methods used by savvy cyber criminals.  

Cyber Attack 

It’s important to use quality antivirus software to help prevent data loss caused by malware. Malicious attacks can also be coupled with a ransom. A Q4 2019 Coveware study reported that the average downtime for businesses as a result of a ransomware attack was 16.2 days. If your business falls victim to a ransomware attack, you suffer the cost of downtime plus the ransomware payment to recover your data.  

Device Failure 

1.89% of hard drives failed in 2019. While it’s a small percentage, many have paid the price for these device failures. Many businesses utilize a backup hard drive in a physical off-site location or opt for cloud solutions.  

How does that affect your business?  

With plenty that can go wrong, your next concern should be the associated loss. During an extended outage, your business is at a higher risk for the following:  

  • Loss of Critical Data 
  • Lost Revenue 
  • Compliance Failure 
  • Decrease in user productivity  

With a holistic Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), a business should have the ability to resume normal operations by regaining access to hardware, applications, and company and client data.  

The best part of building a DRP is a leadership team’s ability to recognize the need for delegation throughout this process. ​This can be done – for free – and only requires effort!  You can literally begin with paper, pencil and the right team’s feedback​. Check out our webinar on the concepts needed to develop a DRP or click here to learn more about customized services. IronEdge is here to help! 

Branson Brade