There is a saying famously known as Murphy’s Law, “If something can go wrong, it will”. A similar sentiment is behind the most commonly shared advice for life and business by all, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”.
Both the above phrases may seem pessimistic and hyperbole but the idea behind them is rather straightforward and simple. One can never know when things will go wrong and needs to be prepared accordingly. When it comes to this preparation for your business, it means insurance and asset recovery options. It also means IT disaster recovery though.
There are a number of situations that can lead to loss of data, information, analytics, and much more for your business. These disasters can trigger this loss and lead to huge financial, compliance, obligatory, and legal hassles that may befall you. An IT disaster recovery plan basically means you use the cloud and other services in a manner where the recovery of these IT-related assets is possible.
One would be remiss if they believed that such disasters only stem from IT issues. As we will see, IT issues account for only 3 to 5 percent of the scenarios where such loss happens. Let us explore the various reasons/ scenarios where a recovery plan is a great idea.
- Natural disasters
Imagine if you will, a scenario where all your paperwork that is relevant to your business is stored in your office when a cyclone or tsunami hits the area. All your paperwork is lost to the natural disaster.
This idea may sound redundant in times of virtual data but do you know your devices and servers are equally exposed to data loss in a scenario such as this one. A flood washing all your devices and demolishing your server room can cause you unparalleled and beyond thought loss in all aspects possible.
Now let us reimagine the scenario we painted initially above but all your files have copies stored in a safe untouchable by disaster location. Cloud storage is the IT equivalent of such copies. That it is a million trillion times easier to make these copies and store them just adds to the benefit. Such storage and potential future recovery when needed is one part of an IT disaster plan as we mention it.
- Building and hardware failures
Natural disasters are one thing, but there are also many other causes that lead to data loss due to affected hardware and systems. Faulty buildings where fires are caught or a leaking roof leading to corrupted servers are just two of the many examples that can lead to this issue.
After this is the issue of the actual failure of the hardware for some reason. A corrupt hard drive failed wiring and transfer of data and many more such issues can lead to an IT nightmare for you.
An IT disaster recovery plan comes to aid in such a scenario. Just as we pointed out for natural disasters, this is a plan where you save yourself from loss by proactively storing away from your building or hardware. Any effect on these in your business will therefore not lead to an IT disaster of an unfathomable scale.
- Human error
It may come as a surprise to you but when we speak of data and IT-related disastrous scenarios that can lead to the kind of loss we have mentioned above, over 90 percent of the time the lead cause is human error. Understand that we are talking of human error and not malice here as the latter would constitute an IT crime and not an IT disaster.
These errors are seemingly small things such as clicking on unverified links and sites, not updating antivirus definitions and precautions, not downloading the right software patches and updates, or even simply a mistaken deleted by an employee or user.
The core idea behind an IT disaster recovery still holds true here. Recovery of data and knowledge lost due to the above errors can be assured through a proper plan and save you and the business time, resources, money, and hassle, amongst other things.
- Cyber Attacks and Data Breaches
While it may not account for a high percentage of reasons why IT recovery is necessary it certainly is one of the most crucial. Data breaches and cyber-attacks are malicious acts on the parts of individuals most often outside the organization and business who wish to gain benefit from your data or other IT resources. However, obtaining the data may lead to mass losses on your end as they are unbothered by the effect on you and your business.
Data security is one thing for which you cannot be non-serious. However, as we mentioned in the beginning, even after your best efforts, something may still go wrong.
In such a scenario, apart from sealing the breach and the ramifications thereof, it is important for you to have access to your data and resources of an IT nature. A recovery plan comes into the picture here and can save you from losses that will be an additional blow to the already present worries of malicious cyber-attacks or data breaches.
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