One thing is almost certain every time we’re called in to diagnose a problem by a business owner and that’s that something will be wrong with their backup system. And after working with over 400 small to medium businesses over the years one just starts to expect it. This is not to say there aren’t plenty of companies out there with superb backup systems, there are. We rarely get called to check into those, apparently.
And not all backup systems we look at are worthless, it’s just that when the data is that difficult to recover so that you can go back to work, what’s the point? Wouldn’t it make more sense to take this one area and just do it right? You bet it would. And that’s what we strongly encourage our clients to do.
After all, these numbers don’t lie and the first thing we want to do when we begin working with you is to ensure that you do not become part of these tragic statistics. Get this, 93% of companies that lost their data for ten days or more filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster and 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately. This is from the National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, DC.
If you’re using tape drives or external hard drives keep in mind that they fail at an average rate of 100%. That’s right. So why do companies still rely on these devices for such an important task? That’s a whole different article there but suffice it to say that advice is omnipresent. Note we didn’t characterize that as good. It’s just advice and we’ve all at one time or another fallen prey to advice from a so-called expert.
Think it won’t happen to you? 20% of small to medium businesses will suffer a major disaster causing loss of critical data every five years, according to the Richmond House Group. So that means that something in the neighborhood of 60% of small to medium businesses will suffer a major disaster causing loss of critical data every fifteen years.
Gartner Group, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company reports that 40% of small to medium businesses will get hacked and more than 50% of those won’t even be aware of the attack. And according to Carbonite around 70% of all business people have gone through data loss from system or disk failure, accidental deletion, fire, viruses or other disasters. Let’s face it, your chances are very good of needing a great backup system at some point.
And when disaster strikes? Then the dangers really elevate. You would expect employees to try to save the day by using recovery software or unplugging or restarting their computer. What you wouldn’t expect is that sometimes these efforts can thwart later attempts by a professional to recover that data, according to Ontrack Data Recovery of Minneapolis.
Having a professional involved prior to the disaster is the key to making sure that the data is not only backed up but efficiently recoverable. And getting a cloud based solution that has redundant backups in the cloud and again offsite to another location is key. Forget the tape drives and external hard drives. If someone suggests those as adequate you might want to rethink that relationship. They just are not solid alternatives for your business continuity.
So get a three point plan together as soon as possible. Investigate what backup disaster and recovery system (BDR) you currently have. Then explore cloud vendors who can do it right who come with excellent references and testimonials. Then make your move and put all of the worries and concerns about your BDR behind you once and for all. And should the worst case scenario happen? You’ll look like a genius!