Enhanced's Oliver Rance considers the importance of business continuity in this month's IT Matters

In this month’s IT Matters, Enhanced Client Relationship Manager, Oliver Rance, considers the importance of business continuity

During my time as an IT Engineer for various companies, I’ve come to realise that one crucial aspect of business continuity planning is being prepared for when a company’s data is compromised or lost.

Oliver Rance, Client Relationship Manager at Enhanced

In today’s world, where Ransomware Attacks occur daily, it’s absolutely essential for businesses to have a backup plan to prevent data loss.

Take a moment to think how disruptive and damaging a cyber-attack or hardware failure could be to your business and your reputation.

Can you imagine not being able to access any of your data, with no indication as to when you could be back up and running, if ever. It’s a scary thought, right?

Backup vs Disaster recovery

Backing up data involves creating copies and storing them in a separate location to ensure data integrity and enable future restoration.

Whereas disaster recovery entails comprehensive strategies, plans, and actions to restore critical systems, infrastructure, and operations after a major disruptive event.

It encompasses not only data recovery but also the swift resumption of hardware, software, networks, and business processes.

While backups are part of disaster recovery, the latter involves broader and more comprehensive measures for seamless business continuity during a disaster.

The cost of downtime

When I ask how long a business expects to be down in the event of hardware failure or a ransomware attack, their typical response is about a day.

However, I enlighten them about the actual process, including potential delays.

Parts can take days to arrive for hardware, rebuilding machines can also take days depending on amount of data, backup restoration then adds on even more time. Then configuration of systems to get back to a normal state could take another day at least.

This entire process can extend to weeks of downtime.  It then leads me to ask the crucial question: “How much would this downtime cost your business?” Inevitably, their response is often several times the expense of implementing a disaster recovery backup solution.

To prevent unforeseen revenue loss due to downtime, it is crucial to give careful consideration to your business continuity plan.

This will enable your I.T. provider to implement the appropriate solution tailored to meet your specific needs.

At Enhanced, we take the time to identify clients’ priorities, expected recovery time and other relevant factors. Once we have an overview of their landscape, we develop a tailored backup and disaster recovery plan to meet their needs.

Written by Oliver Rance, Client Relationship Manager

To find out more on how Enhanced can support your business with your I.T. strategy, get in touch today: hello@enhanced.co.uk