Unfortunately, disasters happen. In many cases, advanced planning and preparation can mitigate the damage done by a disaster. In other cases, the only way to recover from a disaster is to work your way through it. When it’s a digital disaster, your best bet is to plan to mitigate damages before they occur, while also strategizing how to recover after it happens. For the best tools and strategies needed to survive a digital disaster, your New Jersey enterprise will benefit from the disaster recovery services of a northern NJ IT company.
What is a Digital Disaster?
You read the news about these events on a fairly regular basis:
- A 2013 data breach cost megastore Target an estimated $162 million after it lost the personal data of 70 million customers.
- In 2017, Equifax (!) reported a breach that compromised the personal identifying information (PII) of almost 150 million customers in the U.S., the UK and Canada. While it then spent untold millions in improving its data security systems, the breach will cost those affected consumers untold billions of dollars as their data is sold and resold on the black market.
- In 2016, the tech giant Yahoo announced that it had experienced not one but two of the most extensive data loss events in history: a 2013 cyber hack exposed the PII of some 500 million Yahoo users, and a subsequent attack by a different set of hackers the data of an additional 1 billion accounts. In total, Yahoo estimates that the breaches compromised the accounts of all three billion of its user accounts. The finding knocked $350 million off its sale price and, in 2017, its purchaser changed its name to Altaba, Inc.
Despite the immensity of these well-known attacks, the biggest data disaster threat to companies of any size is its workers, not because they are criminal but because they make mistakes.
- In the UK, human errors cause almost two-thirds (62 percent) of all data loss reports to its Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Breaches occur most often when workers send data to the wrong entity (17 percent), but employees have also compromised corporate security by losing hardware, losing unencrypted devices, and failing to redact sensitive information before releasing documents.
- In the U.S., people caused over half (52 percent) of all reported security breaches by failing to follow general data security procedures (42 percent), being generally careless with data security activities (42 percent) and failing to keep current with emerging threat protections (31 percent).
The point is, if you have employees (or are the sole employee of your enterprise), then your business is likely to suffer some form of data loss disaster. That fact makes it more imperative for you to also have a disaster recovery plan and northern NJ IT company partner in place so you don’t lose your business because your company suffered a disaster.
What is Disaster Recovery?
In essence, disaster recovery (DR) entails implementing the security planning that protects data from breaches and also allows an organization to quickly resume operations after a violation has occurred. The challenge for most New Jersey companies is that they frequently don’t invest the time or money into their DR planning. According to research, a full 60 percent of companies don’t have a fully thought-out DR plan, and of those that do, 40 percent report that it isn’t sufficient to provide full protection in the event a disaster takes place.
Why Your NJ Business Needs a Managed DR Plan
If even the biggest corporations can’t maintain their own data security, think of how difficult it is for the small and mid-sized businesses to keep up with those requirements. For that reason, many companies turn to managed IT service providers to help them establish, then maintain, a viable and effective DR plan. In New Jersey, local businesses most often look for a northern NJ IT company to provide the service because they appreciate the high value they receive from a neighborly colleague.
They also appreciate the variety of DR services they receive, but that they didn’t know they needed:
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Strategic planning services
A successful DR plan embraces the entire system it is designed to protect, and it takes time to devise that plan. Accordingly, your managed DR services provider will help you strategize the plan you need to keep your enterprise afloat after a breach or error.
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Preventative maintenance
Security programming requires maintenance and updating just like all other corporate processing systems, as well as digital responses to emerging threats. The MSP will ensure that your enterprise is always protected against known threats.
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Redundancy
In many cases, companies remain viable because they have duplicate (redundant) data sources to draw from if one is compromised. Your DR services provider will ensure you have access to your corporate data even if your primary servers go down.
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Backup
Backup resources retain previous versions of existing data, which is often needed for instructional or background purposes. The MSP can ensure backup systems remain safe even if the main servers and processes are compromised.
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Testing
Most companies don’t routinely test their systems to ensure that they are operating optimally. MSP’s do regular testing to ensure not only that day-to-day functioning is as smooth and efficient as possible, but also to ensure that backup and redundant systems are ready to roll if/when a disaster strikes.
The odds are that your northern New Jersey company will suffer some form of breach, caused either by error or criminal activity. Having a DR system in place will keep your company running while it recovers from the challenge.
