Downtime in hours or days contributes to losses in revenue, customers, employees, inventory and sales. It damages your reputation and increases your legal liability. Technology downtime is not always software or application based. Threats to downtime include natural disasters, like fires, floods and power outages.
Are you fortified against cyber attacks? Cyber attacks on small businesses rose nearly 300% from 2012. Just imagine if you had a Fortune 500 company as a customer. What would that mean for the future of your business?
How susceptible is your business to downtime?
Most midsized businesses' information isn’t protected. Just take a look at these statistics:
Plus, less than half of respondents back up data weekly, and only 23% back up data daily.
Technology downtime not only cripples enterprises; it puts them out of business. According to the Institute for Business and Home Safety, nearly 25% of businesses affected by natural disasters never get back up and running.
A client experienced a power outage that lasted a day and a half, which resulted in a $50,000 gross profit loss. The determined solution was an investment in a backup generator, but the CFO determined that the cost was too high.
This seems like a sound decision until you consider the domino effect created by this kind of downtime and profit loss.
A loss of technology downtime and data is a cost not only to you, but also to your clients. In the end, you lose profit and clients whose data and business security you’ve forever compromised.
Half of the surveyed businesses above do not have an IT disaster recovery plan, and half of them implement a plan only after a data loss occurs.
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Identify the business data critical for smooth operation – including customer records and financial data – and map out a plan to protect it.
Outside of developing a disaster plan, employee education is critical for promoting best practices. Encourage your people to back up files on a frequent basis, and make sure that everyone is familiar and on board with employee-specific disaster plans.
Likewise, your business should back up data regularly and test backups. Whenever your environment changes, you should check and test your backed-up data. Test circumstances include:
As you invest in new technology, formulate a new disaster plan aligned with your IT strategy. Review your plan quarterly, especially if your company experiences rapid growth. Then test, review and implement to secure business and technology stability.
A long-term disaster recovery plan is better than break-fix IT support. A long-term plan ensures that your systems run as expected day to day and account for downtime of all kinds. Take control of your technology and IT support systems by talking to a PointMan™ about how to build a better disaster recovery plan.