What Is Disaster Recovery?

Corruption or destruction of critical data can shut down immediate business operations and leave damage that delays business functions for weeks, months, or even years. 

Therefore, a disaster recovery plan is crucial to a company’s long-term success. Such a plan lays out several key processes and prevention strategies for catastrophes that corrupt, damage, or destroy hardware, software, and data: 

• How the business has prepared for a disaster
• What types of disasters it has prepared for
• How it should go about recovering its data after a catastrophe 
• Any services it leverages to recover as fast as possible 

IT support in Orlando, for example, might specifically plan for floods or monsoons that threaten business continuity. It’s important to consult with IT specialists and consultants to assist in plan formation and iteration to ensure the safety and integrity of mission-critical data.

Why Disaster Recovery Is Important 

The modern business relies on data to function, so much so that third parties become vital to business operations as it grows. Without this data, a business cannot serve its customers to its full capacity. The company may also be held liable for breached or stolen financial information, protected health information, or other data that the law requires it to safeguard.

Without proper defenses in place and efficient recovery measures, a business can lose weeks or months of full-capacity uptime before it returns to regular operations. They may also face legal or civil consequences if they fail to protect user data.

Types of Disasters 

Disasters vary by location and business vertical. Orlando IT support must account for floods and hurricanes, but IT support in Oklahoma must consider tornadoes, while Californians plan for fires or earthquakes. 

However, disasters are not strictly limited to the natural world. Ransomware attacks, data breaches, and other internal security compromises are usually addressed by disaster recovery plans and must be considered when writing them. 

The 3-2-1 Rule: Best Practices Recommended by Orlando IT Support Teams

To best keep data safe, any busy should follow the 3-2-1 rule of data backup and recovery: 

• 3 forms of storage — one primary backup and two copies 
• 2 different types of media storage formats 
• 1 backup, if not more, must be kept off-site, preferably at a location not vulnerable to the same types of disasters 

This practice is the most cost-efficient way to create a securely redundant system of backups. A successful data recovery plan can rely upon these backups to restore full functionality to the business network in little to no time.