Why You Need a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan

It’s easy to cross your fingers and hope for the best, but being prepared for the worst-case scenario can make the difference between your business surviving and failing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor reports that 93 percent of businesses without a disaster recovery plan are out of business within one year of a data disaster. To avoid becoming a statistic, you need to take action now.

Here are three reasons you need a business continuity and disaster recovery plan:

1. Your business is at risk of a cyberattack.

If you think only large enterprises are at risk for a malicious attack, think again – according to the Ponemon Institute, 67 percent of small businesses experienced a cyberattack in 2018. Small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly targeted because they lack the same resources as enterprise companies to prevent breaches, but you can deploy multi-layered security solutions along with 24/7 monitoring to flag and combat threats such as malware and ransomware.

2. Employees are prone to making errors.

Even with the best security measures in place, you can’t always account for human error. Employees can easily misplace or delete an important file, click on a dangerous email link or accidentally corrupt a hard drive. That’s not counting disgruntled current or former employees who intentionally compromise your systems. While you can’t watch your employees around the clock, you can implement cautionary measures and company-wide training to promote best security practices and minimize incidents.

3. Natural disasters can strike suddenly.

Devastating natural disasters can strike anywhere, at any time. That often translates to damaged equipment, displaced employees and power outages – which could spell the end of your company if you’re not prepared. According to a study by Forrester, disasters such as hurricanes, floods, winter storms and fire were among the top 10 causes of business downtime. Backing up data to a secondary location and giving your employees the tools to work remotely helps to mitigate the damage of extended downtime.

Fortunately, the right recovery solution buffers you against all of these events, minimizing the damage your business sustains. When creating a business continuity and disaster recovery strategy, consider the following questions:

• Is it customizable for my RPOs and RTOs?
• Will it let me choose an on-premises, cloud or hybrid solution?
• Can I recover my entire server environment?
• Does it give me full-user access?
• Is it cost-effective for my business?

When you work with SSI, the answer to all of these questions is “yes.” Our DataSafe managed backup and business continuity system keeps your organization protected from any threat. From a single file to your entire environment, we preserve mission-critical data and machines to minimize downtime following a disaster. To learn more about our customizable solutions, visit our website or contact us today for your free IT assessment.