Advantages of Disaster Recovery Plans

Disasters can come in many forms for a business, but one of the most common is a data disaster. It could be caused by something as innocuous as a power outage, or as malicious as a cyber-attack. But the result is the same. Your company’s information becomes corrupted, or is no longer available. Your operations grind to a halt as you search for a solution that will bring you back online. But what if you could plan ahead? What if you could ensure that your business is covered for any eventuality? That even when disaster strikes, operations can continue as normal. At Icon Infoline, we've got you covered with cutting-edge solutions to ensure your data is protected, and your business can bounce back quickly in the face of adversity.

Here are just 5 advantages of a disaster recovery plan that your business could be benefiting from:

Business Continuity - Every minute that your operations are offline is detrimental to your business. It increases the costs incurred and can cause irreparable damage to your reputation. Not to mention the impact it can have on your teams’ productivity as they struggle to access the tools they need to do their work. Having a disaster recovery plan in place, with your data backed up and recoverable in the cloud, will mean that even when a data disaster strikes, your business operations will be able to continue. Often entirely uninterrupted.

Enhanced Security - Ransomware attacks are on the rise every year. Businesses who are ill prepared for a data disaster are often forced to pay millions of Rand's in compensation to criminals in order to retain their information. Incorporating data backup and restore policies into your disaster recovery plan can ensure that even if your business does fall victim to a ransomware or malware attack, the impact is limited. Don’t let your data held at ransom. You can simply restore a backup of your information that is not at risk of being compromised, making criminal efforts moot. Plus, cloud backup services themselves include enhanced security features. These can not only detect unauthorized access, but can help you stop suspicious activity before it can have an impact for your business.

Customer Retention - If your customers cannot trust you to keep their personal information secure, why should they trust in your services? Whenever a data disaster strikes, customers become wary. They start to question the way in which your data was being stored and how reliable your company’s practices and services really are. The longer the disaster impacts your operations, the more frustrated your client base will become. After all, people can excuse a momentary lapse in service. But when your services are offline for hours or days on end, the reputation that you have spent years building up can quickly crumble. One of the many advantages of a disaster recovery plan is that you can ensure your teams are well-equipped to handle client questions. Keep your customers are up-to-date on the situation, and show that you are well prepared even in the face of disaster. The right disaster recovery plan can not only see you maintaining your well-earned reputation. It can even boosting it if handled correctly! You can set a great example that other companies should live up to.

Cost Efficiency - Data disasters can be extremely costly affairs. Between ransoms that are being demanded, penalties that can be incurred when personal information becomes compromised, loss of income and of productivity, a single data disaster has the potential to force company closure. Having a disaster recovery plan in place can see you avoiding each of these costly effects. It can even impact your bottom line in a positive way when business is operating as normal! Backing data up to the cloud using a service like Microsoft 365 Backup, rather than to on-premises disks or servers, can see you reducing your operating costs significantly. For example, cloud storage solutions are more cost effective to both run and maintain than their in-office counterparts. And this is just one of the cost benefits of disaster recovery plans. When working with an external team to put a disaster recovery plan in place, there’s even further room for cost-efficiency. Your internal teams will be able to put their time to more effective use, while an external company will monitor, manage and maintain your data.

Increased Productivity - A disaster recovery plan can keep your data accessible and available even when disaster strikes. But just having a plan in place can improve productivity as well! Ensuring that your teams know their roles in keeping your data secure, and know precisely how to respond when an attack occurs, will reduce the risk posed to your information. It will even improve efficiency all around. After all, one of the advantages of a disaster recovery plan is that your employees have steps to follow that will reduce the sense of panic that is bound to erupt when a disaster crops up. Instead they’ll handle the situation calmly and effectively.

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