A disaster recovery strategy has the potential to save your business from an entire list of catastrophes, ranging from natural disasters to sabotage. One would think that a business strategy of such serious value would be among the first priorities for organizations. Yet, one look at the latest industry reports tells us that this is not always the case. In fact, a 2013 data protection industry report indicates 74% of organizations fail to have backup for all their virtual servers. This is especially surprising given 95% of companies suffered data outages last year.
Even when a business does put a recovery plan in place, there are certain critical aspects that are sometimes overlooked. Here are three different scenarios that usually top the list.
Insufficient testing
We understand disaster recovery (DR) plan testing is a process that eats up precious time and resources. However, putting your DR plan into action is the only way to sufficiently test functionality. This also enables you to make relevant changes or introduce updates into the system.
Ignoring the time factor
If you haven’t set a time frame for your recovery plan, you are in for a surprise when disaster strikes. Simply having a plan in place hardly works; knowing how much time the recovery will take does. After all, losses due to downtime are quite high, too; the average cost of downtime even for a mid-sized organization is a whopping $70,000 an hour. In spite of these figures, only 54 percent of businesses in the US have a rock-solid disaster recovery plan in place that allows them to get their business up and running within 24 hours of a catastrophe.
Zeroing in on only one scenario
This is quite common for organizations that find themselves in disaster-prone zones. Businesses that experience storms on a regular basis, for example, only tend to concentrate on this one aspect. There are other considerations, like internal sabotage or cybersecurity threats. An inclusive DR plan, on the other hand, concentrates on every important aspect, from human error and sabotage to a complete list of possible natural disasters.
Disaster recovery planning is important and doing it the right way is even more vital. After all, what good is a DR plan that fails to optimize recovery when real disaster strikes? At STORServer, our Disaster Recovery Consulting Services offer comprehensive advice as well as solutions. Contact us to implement an effective disaster recovery strategy and our data recovery backup appliances today.
