Could Your Business Survive Without Your Customer Data?
Imagine the effect on your business. The IT system fails and everything is lost. Every single document on your network has seemingly gone up in a proverbial puff of smoke and the company is left with nothing – no records of orders, contracts, invoices, vital contacts, staff details, and payroll. Even the emails have simply vanished.
IT is the lifeblood of any organisation and those who fail to take the correct steps to protect it do so at their peril. Loss of data is a major threat to businesses of all sizes – from single desktop operations to multi-networked concerns.
Any IT solution should not be restricted to the basics like computer repair, network and computer support , but should also take into account business continuity planning.
Danger lurks around many corners ranging from mechanical and electronic failures, human error, to the more sinister employee sabotage and data theft. Even more unpredictable disasters can occur. Many businesses are still reeling from the devastating floods of 2007 – the type of Act of God that can hit any unprotected business.
There is a lot more interest being taken in the topic of business continuity recently, but the implementation of disaster recovery solutions has been pretty hit and miss for many companies and businesses, many of which still rely on aging tape back up technology. One of the biggest failings is testing the system that has been put in place and many companies have felt the pain of the backup simply not being available in their hour of need.
This then leads to the need for far more expensive data recovery or raid data recovery as a method of hopefully retrieving vital data.
Many companies are now investing in remote data backup models as part of their business continuity strategy as these have a number of significant advantages.
For example, despite being stored remotely, data can be restored in the workplace extremely easily by logging into the servers. Data is digitally encrypted so that it can be accessed by no one other than the company to whom it belongs. “It is also a very cost effective method compared to tape systems which are less reliable and constantly need replacing.”
An effective business continuity plan as long as it has been implemented can be the difference between the survival or failure of a business going forward, so to fully understand the implications of a data loss emergency ask yourself some very serious questions: could your business carry on if you lost all of your customer records or what would be the impact on our business if we lost all our computer aided design data.
And of course on a final note, once you have implemented a business continuity plan make sure you test it to make sure the plan is robust in a real environment.