Well, we can give you not one but 10 major reasons to answer this question!
As Benjamin Franklin once said, ‘If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail’. It is essential for the Businesses to introduce a Disaster Recovery plan (or DR plan) to maintain Continuity and keep the lights on since most organisations are now completely dependent on their IT Systems to run their day-to-day Business Operations.
7 out of 10 Small Businesses that suffers major data loss go out of Business within 12 months.
Therefore, if you aspire to be one of the three Businesses that survives major data loss, then we strongly recommend implementing and maintaining a Disaster Recovery plan that has been created exclusively for your Business.
A Disaster Recovery plan is a documented list of procedures and policies that are carried out to recover your IT Infrastructure when your business operations are disrupted by a disaster or an unexpected downtime.
A Disaster Recovery plan will make sure that you can restore your disrupted business operations quickly and efficiently. You can either choose to follow a series of procedures to bring your operations back online, or by switching to a predetermined contingency plan.
To be honest, an outdated Disaster Recovery plan is useless. So, it is vital to ensure that your DR documentation is reviewed and updated on a regular basis so it includes any changes to your IT Systems, your suppliers, locations, staff, testing processes and training requirements. In short, failure to update your Disaster Plan on a timely basis is planning to fail.
Many Small Businesses formulates a Disaster Recovery plan with the best of intentions, but many Disaster Recovery plans fail due to one or more of the following common points of failure:
The following rapid list provides ten indispensable reasons for your Business to introduce a Disaster Recovery plan. This quick list will be a useful resource for anyone that is creating a Disaster Recovery Business Case.
In the event of unexpected downtime, taking a reactive approach instead of a proactive approach to Disaster Recovery will lead to elevated levels of stress and confusion throughout the business. If your staff don’t know how to respond to a disaster or an outage correctly then the extended downtime will affect your business productivity and subsequently your profitability. In the worst-case scenario, it will cost you your Business.
In order to bring your operations back online in the shortest possible time, a Disaster Recovery plan would provide a detailed responsibilities of staff and suppliers, in addition to a list of procedures that would be followed.
It is compulsory for the many organisations that deal with personally identifiable information to have a Disaster Recovery plan in place either by trade and Business laws, or to comply with the requirements of their clients and insurers. For example, in healthcare companies that retain patient records, it is a requirement to have a Disaster Recovery plan as part of their HIPAA compliance to greatly reduce the risk personally identifiable data loss. The DR plan needs to be tested and reviewed on a regular basis to maintain compliance.
It would be extremely inconsiderate to think that your business will never become a victim of a Natural Disaster. In 2019, our weather became more unpredictable which resulted in more Natural Disasters such as Hurricanes, floods and earthquakes across the globe.
If your business becomes a victim of a Natural Disaster, the potential consequences of your business include loss of premises, permanent data loss and loss of Business communications. Without a Disaster Recovery plan in place, a Natural Disaster could possibly be catastrophic for your business
To err is human. There are numerous accidental or malicious instances that might inevitably lead to catastrophic data loss. For example, deletion of accidental or malicious Business Critical file, misplaced backup tapes, missed data backups, equipment loss and theft etc. if you have an effective Disaster recovery plan in place, you could easily recover from catastrophic data loss quickly and efficiently.
No Business owner would want to tell their clients or investors that their data is lost and unrecoverable. In such cases, it’s not just the data that’s unrecoverable but also your Business Credibility and your reputation! If the Clients’ sensitive, personal and critical data is lost irreversibly, you could eventually end up with going out of business.
Customers are more demanding now than ever before because competition is increasing across all industry sectors at a relentless rate. There is plenty of competitors waiting to take your place if your customers’ productivity or profitability is affected by a disruption of your service levels.
Over 43% of UK Businesses have experienced a Cyber Security threat in the last 12 months – a figure that is only set to increase. A successful Cyber Attack could possibly result in irreversible damage to your Business that is caused by a permanent loss of data or becoming a victim of a Ransomware attack. A properly planned and implemented Disaster Recovery plan will ensure that your Business will be able to fully recover your data and quickly return to normal operations in the event of a Cyber-attack.
Hardware or software failure are two of the most common causes of system downtime or data loss. You can introduce a series of processes and procedures that will ensure that you can restore your data within minutes of data loss occurring by introducing a Disaster Recovery plan.
Let us consider this, with a Cloud-based Disaster Recovery solution, your entire Server infrastructure can be replicated (virtualised) in the Cloud within a Virtual Machine (VM). Hence, in the event of any disaster or outage, your staff will be able to access your remote virtual infrastructure and can continue working from any location that has an active internet connection, whether it be from home or a temporary office work space.
Your Virtual Machine will be mirrored at another independent data centre which would back up your systems AND your data as an additional layer of redundancy.
It is universally agreed that the faster you can respond to a disaster or outage, the quicker you can get your systems back online and your Business back on its feet. Therefore, introducing an effective Disaster Recovery solution will make sure that your staff will understand their roles and responsibilities in the event of a disaster or system outage.
The best way to avoid extended downtime that will affect your productivity and your bottom line is a well-documented ‘up-to-date’ DR plan and ongoing staff DR training.
Trying to recover from a disaster or an outage without a proper pathway could have financial implications on your business. in the event of a Disaster, lack of forward planning and processes will lead to internal confusion which would result in extended system downtime.
Moreover, adopting a reactive approach to DR will also put added pressure on the employees that are tasked with getting your systems back online which could distract them from their primary job role and causing them elevated levels of stress. Ultimately, this will have a negative effect on staff morale, productivity and profitability.
Many people agree that 90% of the businesses that suffer a major disaster will go out of business within three years. A Disaster Recovery plan is CRUCIAL to ensure your Business Continuity. It will give you the best possible chance of being one of the 10% that survive a major incident without question.
So, let us take a minute to do the math before creating a Disaster Recovery Business Case.
If you don’t have a Disaster Recovery solution in place already, then we suggest you to take a moment and consider the above points. Then calculate how much money your Business would lose if and when major incident happened.
Finally, thank you for reading our article. We hope that the above 10 reasons have provided you with enough insights to create a compelling Business case for introducing a Disaster Recovery plan.