Every business, small and large, needs a business continuity and disaster recovery plan. This type of plan will help save your business if cyber criminals steal your private data or a disgruntled former employee intentionally destroys your business.
A disaster recovery plan will also help you recover from natural disasters, equipment failure, theft, and other unforeseen accidents. If an incident occurs, you’ll have secure backups and a plan for keeping your business running while your IT team handles the situation behind the scenes.
Cyberattacks can take your business offline
Although it can take months to be discovered, cyberattacks occur every day. No business is immune. Florida has been hit especially hard in recent years. For example, In July 2021, 58,000 unemployment accounts suffered a data breach stolen through the state’s online benefits system called CONNECT.
Whenever a data breach occurs, the system needs to be shut down for a period of time while the threat is identified, isolated and eliminated. However, without a continuity and disaster recovery plan, this process can take much longer.
With a disaster recovery plan, you can work on the threat behind the scenes while still maintaining an online presence.
Small businesses can’t rely on the state to protect them
When it comes to cybersecurity threats, you can’t expect the state to protect you. Contrary to this truth, that’s the impression some government agencies give business owners when they announce plans to prevent cybercrime.
For instance, the state of Florida tried to create its own technology office to manage threats, but things aren’t going well. The Tampa Bay Times reported that top officials have resigned without notice, and half of the positions with the cybersecurity response team are vacant.
Even if Florida’s technology office were fully staffed, it wouldn’t necessarily prevent government agencies from getting hacked.
No matter how many new laws your state passes, and no matter how much money is dumped into cybersecurity programs, you can’t rely on those programs to protect your business. If you don’t have a customized business continuity and disaster recovery plan, you’re not prepared.
Professional IT consultants will create a high-level disaster recovery plan
Florida business owners need to be diligent about cybersecurity, or they could face the same situation as the unemployment agency that was hacked. Smart business owners already have a disaster recovery plan through a reputable IT company. For instance, business owners in West Palm Beach are in good hands with Palm Tech disaster recovery services.
Having a business continuity and disaster recovery plan will protect you from more than just cyber threats. For instance, if a natural disaster, like a fire or flood, wipes out your servers or your local machines, you’ll have a full backup safely stored elsewhere.
Considering the number of record-breaking storms on the Gulf Coast, a disaster recovery plan is essential when you run a business in an area prone to intense storms.
Having a disaster recovery plan makes it easy to restore your data
If your recovery plan is saving data to an external hard drive, you’ll run into problems where databases and custom programming are involved. You need a professional disaster recovery plan to save and store data in a way that can be quickly and easily restored. Raw data won’t always work.
For example, say you have an email database that contains 50,000 contacts. A disaster recovery plan will ensure your email database is saved in a way that can be quickly restored as a database later. If you save raw data, you’ll need to re-enter all 50,000 email addresses into a new database.
Cyberattacks can lead to larger disasters
If you’re attacked by cybercriminals, stolen data will be the least of your worries. Cybersecurity attacks often end with a litany of problems, including lost or corrupted data and unusable devices. It’s not uncommon for businesses to lose business and customer data along with remotely hosted backups and their website all at once.
Recovering from a disaster without a plan is extremely challenging
If you think you can recover from a disaster with a simple backup on an external hard drive, think again. If your backup is stolen, lost, or damaged in a storm, you’ll be out of luck.
The unfortunate reality is that a natural or manmade disaster can strike any business at any time. Hackers, storms, theft, and intentional sabotage are always a possibility. It’s up to every business owner to protect themselves with business continuity and disaster recovery plan.