Whether you work in the public or private sector, your customers’ data is the most important asset to your business and organisation, whatever your company’s goal, ensuring your data is safe no matter the circumstances is imperative to surviving and thriving.

Whether you’re an established business or just starting out, if you get complacent and don’t develop a backup and recovery plan you could be in serious trouble. Even the world’s biggest and most respected organisations are hit with data loss or hacks.

Back in 2011, the PlayStation Network was hacked and over 77 million users had their information stolen. The platform was immediately shut down and Sony went to work at implementing their data recovery strategy. This kind of breach, if not addressed thoroughly and with prior planning could damage the organisation to an unrepairable state. People put their trust in you when handing over their personal data and if that trust is damaged, to no fault of your own, it’s your business that will suffer.

Mother Nature can strike at any time and without prior warning. Anything from flooding to strong winds can cause implications which damage your data’s infrastructure. When building out a disaster recovery plan, it is important to take into account your physical location and have a contingency plan in place should anything happen to your onsite premises.

At the start of 2019, TDS (Tenancy Deposit Scheme), had a serious fire break out at their HQ in Hemel Hempstead. 89 Members of staff were based in their office and as soon as everyone was safe, their continuity plan was implemented. The designated disaster recovery team took action, issuing a prompt PR statement to squash any rumours and customers were regular kept updated through the company’s website and social media channels.

TDS made the decision to move their staff to an interim business continuity office into Centerprise Group company, ADAM Continuity’s Hemel Hempstead work area recovery suite. A list of all their recovery locations can be found as follows - https://www.adam.co.uk/work-area-recovery/. Customers noticed little to no disruption and this was all in part to a brilliantly thought out disaster recovery plan.

Even the very best hardware will one day break down for one reason or another or you could be faced with a simple, yet an unavoidable issue, such as the electricity going down. This downtime, regardless of the timescale can have big implications on your company operating efficiently and cause problems with your company data.

Faulty drivers, network issues and routine infrastructure failures are typically the cause of hardware failure, so having a backup plan is vital in keeping your business running smoothly. Human error is always going to happen at some point or another, people make mistakes it’s just a part of life. Making sure you have calculated for potential errors along the way of a typical working day, will minimize internal struggles and ensure customers notice little to no disturbance.

Any time your business is out of operation it is costing you precious time and money. In previous years, companies have spent a minimum of around £1,000 per minute of unplanned downtime, is that really a cost you can afford?:

 

• Downtime is expensive
• Productivity loss, as well as data loss adds to the cost
• Your brand can be irreversibly damaged due to an unmitigated IT failure
• It is estimated that only around 10% of businesses without a disaster recovery plan survive a major issue

If you haven’t thought extensively about the following questions it might be worth setting sometime aside to work on a recovery plan:

 

• Do you know where your data is and how is it stored?
• How often do you backup your data?
• Who is responsible for your backups?
• What type of equipment will you need to backup your data?
• Will you need to store data backups offsite?

Centerprise became one of the UK’s leading business continuity providers when it acquired ADAM Continuity Limited in 1994. Under the ADAM Continuity brand, we deliver traditional ship-to-site, office recovery and mobile datacentre solutions, along with industry-leading cloud replication and recovery services (DRaaS) designed to meet the business needs of our customers.