Data loss and the disasters that precede them can be both costly and distressing. Even small data losses affecting 100 or fewer files will cost you downtime and lost revenue. These are costs that most businesses cannot afford to suffer, and their likelihood is rising. At an enterprise level, the total volume of data loss increased over 400 percent in 2 years.
Costs represent just one of the reasons all businesses need a backup and disaster recovery plan, but there are other reasons to consider implementing this critical action:
Broad range of threats
Anywhere there is data, there are threats to that data. Data is a valuable component of running a business, and it is open to a number of threats that can lead to data leaks and data loss. These include physical device damage, human threats, technical threats and natural disasters. You’ve likely done your due diligence to protect against many of these, but any vulnerability could put your data in jeopardy, making it vital that you have a plan to help you navigate around any disasters or data losses that occur.
Security measures fail
Even the strongest and most considered security measures can fail, letting in viruses that can do your business harm. Ransomware viruses are known to withhold a victim’s data in exchange for a ransom payment. However, handing ransom over to cybercriminals may not restore your data, and is discouraged as a means of supporting future attacks. Instead, with the proper backup and disaster recovery plan, you can secure you data in the cloud where you can retrieve uninfected versions of the data that was taken, and restore it to a new device, or your old, cleaned one.
Productivity losses
If you rely on the data within your organization to run your business, then your productivity will suffer if that data is lost. The longer your data goes without being recovered, the longer your employees will be unable to perform. When this happens long enough, profits can suffer as a result.
Costs
Directionless, last minute attempts to recover lost data quickly can become expensive. However, by planning and preparing ahead for the eventuality of data loss, you can act quickly without sacrificing a substantial budget to the recovery process, and with fewer productivity related losses. With a plan in hand, you can limit the length of time your business is affected by data loss, or other disaster, and therefore can limit the scope of the damage.
Permanent data loss
Without a data backup and disaster recovery plan, you may be unable to retrieve the data that was lost. Your ability to retrieve data greatly relies on the actions you’ve taken to fortify that data for retrieval. This includes not only creating data backups on physical storage devices, where they are still vulnerable to any number of the threats listed above, but also with a cloud backup service so that they may be retrieved quickly and efficiently, no matter how they were lost or altered to begin with.
Businesses can protect themselves from these damages and restore their data quickly after any data loss event by having the right plan in place.
