Did you know that 60 percent of all small businesses in the United States don’t survive a disaster?
Severe weather cutting the power lines, a cyberattack stealing your data, or even an employee accidentally deleting your data – all these can wipe a small business out for good.
Even if you can somehow recover all your lost data, doing so can be very expensive. Sadly, a lot of small businesses can’t afford this.
And the result? It’s either:
- They take too long to recover their data and resume operations so they lose their customer base.
- They just cut their losses and close down for good.
Years of hard work down the drain just because they didn’t prepare. That’s why a lot of smart business owners are investing in a backup and disaster recovery plan.
What’s a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) Plan?
A BDR plan is what your company will do when disaster strikes. It’s composed of:
- Backup – creating extra copies of your files in a secondary format so you can restore when/if needed; and
- Discovery Recovery – minimizing disaster-related disruptions by maintaining the core functions of your business.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is thinking that these two are the same. Even if you have updated backups, it doesn’t guarantee the continuity of business operations. To ensure that your business will survive a disaster, you need both backup and disaster recovery.
What should your BDR plan have?
We’d like to think of a BDR plan as a strategy against natural and man-made disasters. While the specifics will be different for each business, it should cover all these elements:
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Identify Critical Components
Basically, critical components are the bare minimum resources you need to run your business. This may include technology, software, database(s) and essential employees.
Securing and restoring these critical components will be your number one priority to continue your operations.
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Backup your data
If you don’t have your data, you won’t be able to continue operations. With a solid data backup plan that works for your business, you should be able to restore any lost data and implement disaster recovery.
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Document your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
What would every essential employee do to help with recovery? They should know their role in the SOP, man their stations, and take care of their assigned responsibilities.
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Test the BDR plan
You don’t have to wait for a disaster to know for sure if the plan’s going to work. Testing will allow you to see its strengths and weaknesses, and make adjustments if necessary.
What does a BDR plan protect your business against?
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Breaches in your security system
Yes, a security system is a great investment. But even the greatest security system can fail.
And if it does, you’ll be exposed to cyberattacks where cybercriminals may hold your data for ransom.
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Losses in productivity rate
Let’s say you lose an important database. What will happen? If it’s vital to your business, it’s a likely guarantee that your employees’ productivity will decrease.
And to your business, that means paying the same amount for less work done.
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High costs of last-minute data recovery
Imagine getting into a car accident without car insurance – that’s what losing your data is like without a BDR plan in place.
Sure, you may be able to save your data. But it’s going to cost you a lot more to do that as an emergency response than getting a BDR plan.
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Permanent Data Loss
Sometimes, all the money in the world wouldn’t retrieve your data. Chances of data recovery are based on how well you prepared for data loss.
And if you wait for any of these to happen, it will already be too late. Schedule a free consultation with one of our CTS consultants to find out how a BDR plan can help your business survive a disaster.