Data Backup Requires A Strong Disaster Recovery Plan

By Paul Butcher

You often hear the terms ‘backup’ and ‘disaster recovery’ paired together.   It’s no surprise that they can be confused with one another.  In this blog post, we take a look at what sets them apart.   In a recent CIRA survey, it was reported that in 2018, 40% of Canadian organizations had experienced a cyber-attack.  The most significant impact of those attacks?  The amount of resource it took to respond to these incidents and the cost to organizations when ill-prepared.

BACKING UP DATA IS NOT THE SAME AS KNOWING HOW TO RECOVER IT QUICKLY, IN THE EVENT OF A DISASTER.

Backup simply refers to the process of making copies of data or data files to use in the event the original data or data files are lost or destroyed.  However, there is a lot of planning that goes into creating a solid backup plan. The most common types of backup are full backup, incremental, and differential backup.  Additionally, you must decide on where the data will be stored, what applications are to be backed up and how this data will be secure. There’s a lot of work that goes into complete backup plan.

SO HOW DOES THIS DIFFER FROM DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) EXACTLY?

Disaster Recovery (DR) is a comprehensive set of procedures which enable your organization to focus on protection from significant disasters. Typically, these could be incidents such as a cyberattack or device failure.  A solid DR plan allows you to get back into business quickly, reducing downtime and extra resource cost.  Remember that critical data that you backed up? This DR plan allows you to determine exactly how to recover it and get it working for your business again, as quickly as possible.

DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOUR FIRST DISASTER TO BUILD YOUR DR PLAN

Many organizations contact us after a negative event has affected their critical data. Often, they don’t realize that only having an offsite back up solution is not enough to be fully prepared for a disaster scenario.  Without a proper DR plan in place there are often many elements of a successful recovery that are overlooked, causing the process to become more frantic and take much longer than it should.

HOW CURRENT IS YOUR DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN?

As your business changes, so do your DR needs.  It’s good practice to perform a thorough DR audit at least every six months.  You can do this using a range of online resources or contact a supplier to offer assistance.

Paul Butcher – Partner at HostedBizz

HostedBizz is a Cloud Infrastructure as a Service provider for the IT Reseller channels and business. Our suite of hosted, business critical IT products and services remove the technical challenges and reduce the costs associated with infrastructure and application ownership. We provide public and private cloud infrastructure along with hosted applications and services including virtual servers, virtual desktops, data backup and disaster recovery solutions that easily scale with organizational needs.