Disaster Proof Your Business

There is nothing more important to the well-being of a business than the security and reliability of its information systems. If your company has a flawless Disaster Recovery Plan you will be able to rest easy knowing no matter what happens you will not lose any of your businesses critical information. Without a good "DR" plan, a simple act of nature or man-made incidents could potentially lead to permanent data loss and prolonged downtime. Disasters that will cause loss of data can also occur on a smaller scale. Some examples could be accidentally damaging a workstation, or even a power surge that can fry your storage device. Disasters can come on a large or small scale, but one thing is certain, every business needs a solid "DR" plan.

Natural disasters are NOT the leading cause of businesses losing valuable information. These disasters only make up about 3% of data loss cases recorded. Hardware failure makes up a whopping 44% of all recorded data loss cases. This isn't just failed hard drives. This can also be servers, switches and more. Software errors make up 14%, and compromised security makes up all the rest with 7%. As you can see, there is potential for possible data loss in a lot of different ways. Not having an effective "DR" plan in place is basically like not having insurance on valuable possessions in the sense that if you lose it, it's gone forever.

Things to consider when creating a Disaster Recovery Plan:

• Your business must first take a look at all the potential causes of data loss and how severely each would affect your business. The loss of certain resources might bring your company down completely, while the loss of others will not be as severe. This is called a "potential risk inventory". Integrated Computer Services is experienced in evaluating networks for all these obvious risks, along with the ones you might not be thinking about.
• First you took inventory of the importance of each of your business resources. Second we ask that you evaluate the likelihood of each occurrence. How likely is it that the listed possibility will actually occur?
• The next step is to create the "DR" plan. You need to assess each potential threat listed above and figure out the length of time it would take you to recover from this disaster. Depending on your business, being down for a couple hours can be extremely damaging for productivity. You must analyze the plan and make sure that each recovery would be within acceptable time to keep your business running smoothly.
• The last step is to put your plan into action! Test all your solutions to see if the plan runs as designed.