Disasters, whether natural or cyber-related, are inherently unpredictable and can wreak havoc on businesses and IT infrastructure alike. While we don’t have much construction experience, we can certainly help the recovery process by sharing our tips and insight to answer the question: Why is disaster recovery important (and why every company needs it).
What is a disaster recovery plan?
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a disaster recovery plan is defined as “a written plan for processing critical applications in the event of a major hardware or software failure or destruction of facilities.”
In essence, a disaster recovery plan facilitates the swift restoration of IT infrastructure following incidents such as ransomware attacks, fires, floods, or structural damage. This comprehensive plan encompasses the recovery of business-critical data, systems, desktops, servers, and all other components within the infrastructure.
The primary objective of a disaster recovery plan is to minimize downtime in the event of a disruption. It’s important to note that downtime can be extremely costly for businesses. Research indicates that an hour of downtime costs $8,000 for small companies, $74,000 for medium-sized enterprises, and a staggering $700,000 for large corporations.
Do you really need disaster recovery?
A disaster recovery plan serves as a vital form of insurance for all facets of a company’s IT infrastructure. Just as one would insure their home, employees, and business operations, safeguarding the core assets of the business, namely its IT infrastructure and data, is paramount. Let’s delve into how a disaster recovery plan has proven its worth for our BriteStar customers:
Lupton Associate’s Ransomware Attack: An attack locked all users out and held systems hostage and demanded a ransom. Instead of paying, systems were restored from a backup and operations were back up and running with only 15 minutes of downtime. Read the whole story here: “Small Business. Big IT Problems.”
Fire at Shadow Lake Golf and Racquet Club: ollowing a kitchen fire that ravaged the club’s office and physical IT setup, the BriteStar team sprang into action, swiftly establishing a temporary office space and providing computers. Thanks to the meticulous disaster recovery plan and cloud backups, no data was lost, and Shadow Lake promptly resumed its operations on the same day. Read how the proactive plan avoided more headaches on an already stressful day: “Proactively Mitigating the Effect of Disaster”
No company can anticipate a cyberattack or fire (or any natural disaster). However, the responsibility is on the company to be prepared if one does occur.
