4 Reasons Why Every Business Needs a Disaster Recovery Plan

A disaster can happen to any business, at any time. Because of this, it’s never been more important for every business to have a good disaster recovery plan in place. A good disaster recovery plan will put steps in place for your company to follow in the event of a disaster, to minimize the damage done and keep the business from failure.

Sadly, planning disaster recovery can often be a low priority for many business owners. It can be tough, and often overwhelming, to find the funds and time needed to put an appropriate disaster recovery plan in place. But with research finding that only ten percent of companies without a disaster recovery plan actually manage to come out the other side of a major failure, it’s clear to see that this is something that should not be overlooked.

Spending time to plan how your business should react in the event of a disaster could be the difference between closing down or continuing to thrive. Here are some disasters that every business should plan for.

Hardware Failure

Hardware faults and power outages still account for a huge amount of unplanned downtime for businesses. In 2017, 45% of unplanned downtime was due to a hardware fault, while 35% occurred due to unplanned power outages. Overall, around 80% of business failures are caused by things that are actually easy to prevent such as faulty drivers, network issues, and infrastructure failures.

While staying on top of hardware maintenance is crucial, it is not always enough to prevent a complete breakdown leading to a disaster. Instead, a good disaster recovery plan will allow you to get your business up and running again faster and avoid catastrophe. When it comes to a disaster recovery plan for hardware failure, it’s important to make sure that all files are backed up in different places. Cloud backups are an ideal choice for many businesses since these do not rely on hardware as much.

Cybercrime

Today, cybercrime has become a huge concern for businesses around the world and small and medium enterprises are at the highest risk. This means that any good disaster recovery plan needs to account for cyberattacks, hacking, and data breaches. Many small to medium business owners are completely unprepared for this as they do not believe their business is valuable enough for hackers to look at. But the truth is that cybercriminals see smaller organizations as an easier target.

It’s a question of when, rather than if it is going to happen, so having a comprehensive plan in place coupled with cybersecurity training for employees and solid security measures throughout the business is the best way to prevent cybercrime from bringing your business to its knees. Working with a managed IT support provider such as Texaport is an ideal option when it comes to protecting your business against cybercrime. They are highly educated and experienced with cybersecurity and will implement best practices to keep your business secure.

Natural Disasters

A natural disaster might be the last thing on your mind when it comes to thinking about protecting your business from threats. However, anything could happen when it comes to Mother Nature, so it’s good to make sure that you are prepared for every possibility. Flooding and fire are some common reasons why businesses find themselves in a disaster situation, and it’s good to be prepared for these even if you don’t run your business in an area that is prone to them. In some cases, natural disasters elsewhere could impact your business. For example, if your servers are located in another area or country that is more prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, or tsunamis.

Human Error

People will always make mistakes, and it’s important to be prepared for this to happen. Even the smallest of errors could spell disaster for your business, and human error is often tied in closely with cybercrime, with hackers preying on the vulnerability of humans to get into your secure files and steal your business data through phishing attempts.

Simple mistakes such as failing to save a document, saving over important information, or accidentally replying to the wrong email could cause a chain of events that spell disaster for your business. While it’s impossible to completely prevent any kind of human error unless you are only interested in working with robots, the good news is that a good disaster recovery plan can make it easier for you to fix common errors.

Make sure that your disaster recovery plan involves regular backups to easily restore any information that may have been lost.

Any business today could be subjected to a disaster, and for some, it’s the end of the business. With a good disaster recovery plan in place that covers all possibilities, you can give your business the best chance of bouncing back.