5 Reasons Why You Need a Disaster Recovery Plan
Businesses must take into account the fact that a disaster could occur at any moment and leave a significant amount of property and data damage. Security breaches, power outages, fuel shortages, and natural disasters can all happen suddenly and the effect these disasters leave will result in loss of productivity and lead to a decrease in sales. This is why effective data backup and disaster recovery strategies are critical to almost any enterprise regardless of how big or small your business is.
By MIA CLARKE
In this article, we will discuss the reasons why a disaster recovery plan is crucial to any company.
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A disaster recovery plan is a documented program that is intended to aid a business in carrying out proper actions during a disaster in order to protect company assets and promote recovery. The purpose of it is to clarify the steps that must be taken before, during, and after a disaster so that the whole team can perform those actions. Here are the three goals that a DRP must accomplish:
— Increase efficiency
— Reduce data loss as much as possible
— Ensure that there is no downtime
Whatever sort of error or problem afflicts your records, your company’s details will be secure, if you have a disaster recovery plan in action.
1 Natural Disasters
Natural disasters such as storms, hurricanes, flooding, or fires, can do irreversible damage to your business. You will find it difficult, near impossible, to restart your activities without having a disaster recovery plan in progress. According to Continuity Central, about 70 percent of businesses that are involved with a natural disaster do not reopen or bankrupt within three years after the disaster.
When natural disasters occur emergency fuel services are much needed. To avoid expensive downtime and keep recovered operations running you would need emergency fuel services for your generators and other equipment by a dependable provider. Businesses that provide this assistance, such as Specialty Fuel Services, are trusted by customers because of their 24/7 availability that is required in case of fuel emergency services.
2 Customer Loss
You need a disaster recovery plan to give your customers the level of support they have come to expect from your organization. If the company needs to close or has a long service outage, you risk losing important clients to a competitor. Although, keeping an existing client is less expensive than winning over a new one, gaining an old customer’s trust back is near impossible after a disaster, data breach, or prolonged service interruption.
The damage done to your company after a disaster will have a negative impact on your organization’s reputation. Additionally, employee engagement along with your reputation will be ruined and it could take years to rebuild.
3 Human Errors
Humans are not flawless and they make mistakes. Accidents made by you and your colleagues are very common. Such errors include removing a valuable document by mistake, or accidentally not saving changes, which can cause your business a lot of money.
When it comes to dealing with an emergency, having a disaster recovery plan in order will ensure that you and your team are on the same page. In addition, it will allow your team to move faster since you can access certain points that were generated through backups. While training systems can definitely help minimize mistakes, the best way to fully protect your company from such errors is by regularly backing up the data.
4 Missing Out on Potential Clients
Not having a disaster recovery plan not only will it affect and concern your current clients but potential new ones as well. If you lose the customer’s trust, word will come out and with it, you could lose potential clients as well as ruin your business’ reputation.
Displeased customers tend to leave unfavorable comments on businesses’ review sites and they might not be deleted even after you’ve already fixed the issue. This has the ability to ruin your online image and identity, as well as cost you a lot of money. However, all of this can be avoided with a disaster recovery plan.
5 Hardware Failure
If your hardware fails, due to a power outage or another cause it can wipe out all of your files. Although you can protect your data with power surge protectors, and other equipment, it is still very necessary to back up regularly.
According to Invenio IT, around 45 percent of downtime is caused by hardware malfunctioning which may range from defective server drives to faulty network switches. The most effective way to ensure that your hardware doesn’t disrupt your services is by having a disaster recovery plan that removes all points of failure.
Disaster recovery plans will protect your company from threats such as a loss of reputation, system failures, and negative effects on clients. However, no company is resistant to the possibility of losing its data but with a recovery plan in action, the damage can be minimal and temporary.
