Hacks are rare events but can have profound effects on your business’ ability to function depending on what resources are lost in the attack. Rather than trying to anticipate “how” a disaster occurs, it is often better to focus on what your business needs to protect. Here are a few issues for you to consider in forming an IT disaster recovery plan:

What services do you IT resources require?

Most folks use their computer every day without thinking of about what your computer needs to operate. However, working with IT disaster recovery services requires you to do just that. For example, the typical business uses all of the following services:

• Internet: Every Internet provider suffers service outages once in a while. If your Internet provider is hit with a disaster, however, it could be just as bad as if your business is hit with a disaster. Does that mean you should avoid doing business with IT service providers in high-risk areas? Not necessarily. The nature of the Internet is that there are virtually infinite paths by which a data packet can travel from one IP address to another. As long as your Internet provider has a disaster recovery plan with redundant network resources, your business’ computers may not go down when your Internet provider goes down.
• Electricity: Without electricity, nothing in the IT department runs. Should your company lose power, all the work you’re performing might get lost without a back-up plan. Think about your plan for electricity when you are working with an IT disaster recovery service on your disaster policy.
• Access: Electricity and data cannot reach your office if the transmission lines are lost. Any disaster recovery plan must also consider alternative means of receiving data (such as wireless 4G) in the event that fiber-optic lines are lost between you and your provider.

How will you recover your data?

Data is not only critical to your business, but it may also be a valuable target for hackers. Thus, cyber security consulting services are often part of your disaster planning for two reasons:

1. Data backups: These may be necessary to recover from a data intrusion. This backup will ensure that your data has not been tampered with.
2. Security: Your data backups must be secured since they might provide information that is just as your active data files.

You have a number of options when it comes to data backups. Working with a cyber security consulting service can help you decide which works best for your business. Keep in mind that a cyber security consulting service may recommend multiple data backups since each may have its strengths and weaknesses.

Cloud disaster recovery services have the advantage of keeping your data in a remote, but easily accessible, location. If you are hit with a disaster, it is unlikely that your cloud backups will also be hit with a disaster. Although an estimated 83% of a company’s workload will be stored on the cloud in 2020, the disadvantage is that both you and your cloud storage will need electricity and an Internet connection to access the cloud. If either of you loses electricity or access to the Internet, you cannot use your cloud backup.

Physical backups, on the other hand, have the advantage of data recovery without the use of the Internet. Tapes, discs, or external hard drives can simply be connected to your network to recover important data.

In addition to remote cloud storage, it is possible to remotely store physical backups. Physical backups are simply transported to secure offsite storage facilities.

Disasters can be disruptive but you can plan for business continuity using IT disaster recovery services. For more information, don’t hesitate to reach out to ICC when you want to protect your business.