From Wikipedia:
“Disaster recovery is the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity.“
This is all well and good. But what does it mean for you and your business?
Well let’s first discuss disasters. Disasters recovery can mean any of the following for a business:
- The restoration of a file from simple accidental corruption or deletion by a well meaning employee;
- It can mean the replacement of data on an entire drive that has given up the ghost;
- It could mean replacing a broken server;
- It could mean replacing all of the computers and data destroyed in a fire, earthquake, flood or other disaster.
As you can see there are many layers of disaster recovery- each carrying with it, its own level of concern for the business. For instance, in the first example above, depending on the file deleted, you may or may not want an immediate solution (i.e. the bookeeper has deleted your only Quickbooks file) or you may care less if the file is ever recovered (i.e. an employee deleted their desktop background image).
Disasters can have dire affects on businesses. A recent study revealed that of companies experiencing a “major loss” of data, 43% never reopened, 51% closed within 2 years of the loss and a mere 6% survived over the long term.
Disaster recovery is simply what do you do to deal with a disaster. How do you recover from one?
Well disaster planning and prevention is really the other side of the disaster recovery coin. You can’t recover, from what you don’t plan. Disaster planning, from an IT perspective, provides for :
- Data backup
- Geographic diversity in the storage of your data
- Hardware failure recovery planning
- Complete loss planning
Online backup services provide for #1 & #2 above. They can also help with #3 & #4 but because of your need for quick access to your data in both of these circumctances, online backup only solutions will be limited by the speed of your internet connection and it can take days to copy all your data back.
At Everon we offer a product called a TDP (Total Disaster Protection). Our TDP, provides you a plan in all four scenarios. Not only can it back your data up and send it offsite for storage and protection, but it can get you back up and running in 24 hours should you lose everything (scenario #4).
So what is disaster recovery? Disaster recovery is the ability to get back to work with the data you need, when you need it. Anything short of that, is not disaster recovery.
Call us today and see how we can help you protect your business. 1-888-244-1748.