Attention Business Owners: Do you Have an IT Disaster Recovery Plan in Place?

Some of us are out and out optimists, half glass full types who think disasters happen to others and don’t apply to themselves, while others recognize that major issues can and do arise and this could seriously threaten a business. Imagine the fall-out if all your clients’ financial data fell into the wrong hands! Or a major hard drive crash that results in a heap of lost data that can never be retrieved!

Minimizing Risk

Simply put, it is every business owner’s responsibility to minimize risks to the business and putting an IT disaster recovery plan into place is a wise thing to do. Of course, it might never need to be used, but the risk is always there and that recovery plan will save the day!

How to Start?

Search online for a leading NY based provider of managed IT solutions and they would be happy to help you assess the risks that your business faces and put together an effective disaster recovery plan.

The possible scenarios for IT disasters include the following;

• Data breach – The hackers that trawl the web looking for weak networks targeting customer financial details are very proficient and they can be in and out in a few minutes, taking a copy of all your client’s credit card data with them. If the worst should happen, you can implement the disaster recovery plan immediately and all relevant parties know exactly what they have to do; banks and credit card companies are informed, as are the customers involved, and this is done in a timely fashion.
• Server failure – If a server died and you had no back up, this would have disastrous consequences and for a major business to be offline even for a single day would have a negative impact on the day to day running of the organization. A recovery plan reduces your offline time to a matter of minutes rather than hours or even days.
• Virus attack – There’s a lot of malware out there; some very harmful, while others are annoying more than anything; it all depends on the intention of the code writer. Some hackers create a virus that, once infected on a computer, on a certain date and time, wipes all the data from a drive! Imagine that! There is no financial gain from such an activity, rather it is malicious intent to cause harm and the victim is left with a lot of missing data! Technology has impacted our lives in so many ways, as this blog highlights.

Industry Specific Solutions

Take dental practices, for example, there are IT support companies that specialize in helping dental practices compile a disaster recovery plan that covers every possibility regarding IT disasters, including cyber-security, which should always be in place. Your appointment software needs backing up automatically every few minutes, with a shadow server that is ready to kick in if the primary server fails for any reason and all patient data needs to be duplicated in several locations. In the event a breach is detected, your IT support partner can track the origin of the attack and you can inform the authorities, which might lead to prosecution.

The IT infrastructure is one of the most important aspects of any business and one service offered by the IT support provider is disaster recovery, which could really save the day at some point in the future! Don’t be complacent with your business; cover every possibility by creating an on-point IT disaster recovery plan and you will sleep well at night, knowing that you are prepared for any eventuality.