What Every Small Business Needs to Know About Disaster Recovery – Part 4

Last week, in part 3 of this series, we took a look at creating a Business Impact Analysis to determine how much a serious data loss could cost your company, and how to determine how time – both in terms of how much data you could afford to lose and how quickly you would need to recover it – figures into your calculations. This week we are continuing our review of disaster prevention, recovery, and IT support with a look at just how much peace of mind is worth and next week we will finish this series with a check list of disaster recovery strategy best practices.

The Question

With all the information we have collected using the tools we have presented over the past three weeks, you can actively look at the cost of purchasing backup equipment, or at least know where you can locate it in an emergency, as well as the backup solutions and managed IT support company that you can call on when needed. You can evaluate cloud-based backups, some of which can be set for updates as often as every few minutes, and evaluate the recovery time. Recovery can vary from almost immediate, to hours, to days. You can install a system in which your most important files are recovered very quickly while others are restored over a number of days. The thing is, almost anything can be accomplished with today’s technology. The question you have to answer is: what do you really require and how much are you willing to pay for it?

The Answer

What we suggest is taking a look at a worst-case scenario. Price out the equipment, tools, software and personnel you will require. Balance that against business losses that might be incurred if such an event takes place. Then look at options for less catastrophic events and analyze the downsides of drive crashes or local power outages. These are more easily resolved but only if you are prepared for them.

The Solution

Vendors are important, but even more so will be an independent managed IT support company that will sort through the marketing hype that every company puts out and help you determine the equipment and software that is truly best for your company. Once you have worked through your options, you can make choices and move forward. A word of caution: all too often, companies go through the exercise of determining how they should prepare and react in the event of cyber intrusion, equipment failure, man-made or natural disaster, but fail to actually pull the trigger and spend the money necessary to implement that plan. Don’t be one of them.

Contact DynaSis Today

Here at DynaSis, we have helped many companies create their disaster prevention and recovery plans. Most are surprised to learn that we are able to provide all the equipment they need with little to no money out of pocket by tying the cost of the equipment into a monthly IT managed support agreement that covers all the equipment, software, maintenance, help desk and field support they need for not only possible disasters, but for trouble-free, worry-free daily operations. They are also surprised to learn that this service usually costs no more than they are currently paying for IT, and often costs even less. Want to learn more? Give us a call today at 770-629-9615.