WHY IS DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING IMPORTANT?

IT World Canada recently spoke with Dan Hamilton, VP of Technology at Whipcord about the secret to successful Disaster Recovery in the face of growing cybersecurity threats.  

WHY IS DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING IMPORTANT?

In today’s increasingly complex IT environment, businesses are under great pressure to manage and protect their data from various types of threats. From ransomware attacks to unforeseen natural disasters, there are a multitude of threats that can put business operations in jeopardy. In addition, data retention legislation is impacting how businesses manage, store and protect their customer’s data, which adds another layer of complexity.

So how do organizations demonstrate data management compliance and prove to their stakeholders that they can recover from a disaster with minimal impact to the business? Well, it begins by being proactive and building strong business continuity plans around their critical IT applications that their users need to perform their daily functions.

Disaster recovery planning is a critical part of business continuity planning, as it revives the company’s IT operations and processes if a disaster strikes. Having a plan in place that’s proven to work can save a company time, money and its reputation. Many companies have already made disaster recovery a priority and invested heavily in modern and reliable solutions. In fact, Gartner Research has estimated that businesses will have invested more than $3.7 billion in disaster recovery methods from 2017 through to 2021.

Unfortunately, to this day, many companies still don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place and are still using outdated methods to back up data. Some don’t even perform adequate testing to ensure that their backups are recoverable or uncorrupted.

So, what if your business is still in the dark ages of disaster recovery planning, but wants to take proactive steps in a new direction? Where do you start? Here are some general tips that can help you get started in building a disaster recovery plan for your business:

What is Ransomware and why it’s increasing

Most recently many businesses have transitioned their workforce to work from home, making them increasingly reliant on being digitally connected through a variety of devices. Although there are many advantages to this change, we’re also seeing some disadvantages in terms of increased ransomware attacks due to the significant growth of devices being left exposed. In the first half of 2020, ransomware attacks reached an all-time high, and we continuously hear about new attacks happening every week. What is often happening in these attacks, is the hackers are encrypting servers and files with ransomware before demanding a large sum of bitcoin in order to release the resources. These costly attacks can range from hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars.

This frightening ongoing trend is putting all types of business on high alert and demanding that they prioritize their IT security and disaster recovery plans.

If you're a business searching for a solution that offers more reliability during times of uncertainty, then you're not alone. Everyday it seems like there's another report predicting those uncertain times are increasing, with outages being "bound to continue as extreme weather events become more frequent and severe.” Hearing about how BC Hydro's customer outages have tripled in the past 5 years, the luxury of a Disaster Recovery (DR) solution has now become a necessity.

There’s more to choosing an IT partner than just searching for a solution that meets your technical requirements. Your partner will become an extension of your team, so it’s important to take the time to find the right fit, and asking the right questions is the first step in creating a trusting and lasting relationship. In this mini-series we’ll explore the most important questions we’d want you to ask someone like us! 

Disaster Recovery Has Never Looked This Good

The top sources of financial loss for businesses are downtime caused by uncontrollable factors like hardware failure - but did you know, 58% of downtime incidents are actually caused by human error, while natural disaster account for only 10%? So, while your biggest concern is a Chinook coming in after a big snow fall, Janet over in reception is getting way too excited talking about her new Instant Pot, knocking her cup of coffee all over her computer.

It's here! NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 1.5

Mitigate the risk of losing access to email data and ensure Availability for Office 365 users. With version 1.5 and existing email recovery technology, users can increase scalability, take advantage of powerful automation and self-service restore, and expand platform support. 

The biggest concern during a disaster is the financial loss that businesses will incur based on their ability to keep recovery time (RTO) low. Larger corporations have the financial resources and staff to reduce downtime, but the statistics for small to medium sized businesses are not as encouraging. It’s important to have a plan in case of disaster – which can be anything from a natural disaster to an internal failure. But, the decision on which service to utilize will depend on your in-house IT specialists so before making your decision you’ll want to consider your available resources, risks and the subsequent financial losses you may face.

When talking about disaster, most people immediately think of natural disasters, but there are more risks than just heavy rain or damaging winds. It’s important to consider man-made disasters when assessing your risks like chemical spills, cyberattacks or arson.

If you use a computer often, you've likely have had inconvenient experiences resulting in data loss. From accidentally deleting a work-in-progress to your network being three feet deep in water, data loss can leave a serious negative impact on your businesses performance. Fortunately, services such as Veeam Cloud Connect Backup can be a solution to these problems, letting you can rest easy knowing you have a (literal) backup plan.

Whipcord is excited to announce our expansion into the Toronto market and to help us kick off our launch, we're co-hosting an event on February 22 with Veeam and CareTek.

We're Canadian...eh? 

Whipcord is proudly Canadian owned and operated with all of our facilities and infrastructure located in Canada. We guarantee that your data stays here, meaning that it's secure and not bound by the US Patriot Act.

Our team specializes in four key areas

We're a one-stop-shop for all your needs with our experts specializing in colocation, backup & replication, cloud and network and we can combine services to create the best fit for your business.

Whipcord is excited to announce our expansion into the Vancouver and Toronto markets and to help us kick off our launch, we're co-hosting an event on July 12 with partners Veeam, 3Copies and Skyway West.

What an exciting day! Today we launched not only our redesigned website, but a fresh new logo. Whipcord has many large projects in the works this year as we expand into new markets and we feel our new logo represents the endless solutions we can offer our clients.