Introduction
Data, data everywhere. The cloud is making it easier to store and access your company’s data from anywhere, but that doesn’t mean you can just rest easy. You still need a disaster recovery plan for your business’s most important files and documents. It’s not something you want to put off until it’s too late! In this post we’ll look at how you can ensure that your data is safe from disasters by protecting it on all fronts—and what you should do if one strikes anyway:
Your data is vulnerable.
Your data is vulnerable to theft, loss, and corruption. It’s also vulnerable to natural disasters like floods and fires; human error (like accidentally deleting an important file); and cyber attacks that can compromise your company’s security systems.
In order to protect your business against these threats, you’ll need a disaster-proof data protection strategy–one that keeps all of your sensitive information safe even if something goes wrong with the physical location where it’s stored.
Don’t forget physical security.
Physical security is also important. It includes things like firewalls, antivirus software and other security measures that help protect your data from disaster.
Physical security tends to be overlooked because it’s not as exciting as cloud storage or virtualization technology; but if you want your business to keep functioning after an emergency strikes–whether that’s a natural disaster or some other catastrophe–then physical protection should be at the top of your list.
Plan for disaster recovery.
You may have a backup of your data, but if you don’t have a backup of that backup, you’re no better off than before. Your business needs to plan for disaster recovery. It’s not enough just to back up your files; they need to be stored in multiple locations and encrypted as well. You should also make sure that regular backups are being made so that if one fails or gets corrupted by an unexpected event (like an earthquake), you can easily restore from another copy without losing too much time or money.
Finally, keep those backups safe! The best place for them is probably somewhere else entirely–not just another building on site but somewhere far away from both physical damage and natural disasters like floods or fires (or even something more mundane like theft). This way if anything happens at all during this period where nobody is accessing anything anyway because they’re too busy dealing with the aftermath of whatever just happened (and let’s face it: Something WILL happen!), then there won’t be any loss at all because everything was already safely stored away elsewhere beforehand
There are lots of things you can do to protect your data from disaster, but don’t forget about physical security.
While you’re thinking about how to protect your data from disaster, don’t forget about physical security.
Physical security is important and often overlooked. It can be more expensive than digital security, more difficult to manage and sometimes even more difficult for employees at businesses with multiple locations or branches. But if a disaster strikes and there’s no way for anyone in the company–not just IT staff–to access their files because of lack of power or connectivity due to natural disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes, then all those efforts spent on digital protection will have been wasted.
Conclusion
All in all, it’s important to remember that disaster recovery is a process and not an event. It’s something you should be thinking about, planning for, and implementing on a regular basis–not just when something goes wrong.
