In the unpredictable world that we live in, you may buy insurance to protect your business against financial losses, however that will not help you protect or replace your valuable data. The constantly rising cyber-crimes and the General Data Protection Regulation has mandated organizations to secure their data and also have a disaster recovery plan in place. On one hand, any data loss or theft can leave you vulnerable to legal and financial ramifications, not to forget the damage to reputation, and on the other hand, you have to deal with unplanned downtime which can lead to a drop in productivity. And in today’s competitive times you cannot afford downtime. In any worst-case scenario, a cloud backup disaster recovery plan can help you save the day.
Related Read: Top 8 Cloud Security Best Practices
4 Data Disasters to Look Out for!
1. Natural Disasters
These can be in the form of floods, fires, storms or earthquakes. Without cloud computing disaster management, you may find it difficult to resume operations, thus, putting your company at risk.
2. Hardware Failure
You may also lose your data to hardware failure, which may occur due to any surge in power. Even with cooling systems in place it is important that you regularly take your data back up using either cloud-based or on-site storage.
3. Human Errors
Even with the best of intentions and procedures in place, mistakes do happen. It may be that your employees forget to save changes, accidentally delete crucial data or hit the wrong button without even realizing it. While continuous training helps to keep staff updated on best practices, it is important that you take cloud backup of your data regularly.
4. Cyber-attacks
Even with all security measures in place, your data may fall victim to cyber-attacks with viruses and other malware holding your data hostage, causing immense financial damage and loss of reputation. Your disaster recovery plan should include steps to keep data safe and recover from any attempt at hacking.
Cloud computing disaster management can therefore help limit any loss that may occur due to data leak or loss. It is important to note that while you can store your data on-site, cloud backup can support your business and see you through any unplanned downtime. Cloud backup solutions offer faster and assured recovery, while also reducing costs and freeing up your IT staff to focus on core business functions. The other advantage of cloud data recovery solutions is the fact that they automatically store the data safely off-site for disaster recovery purposes.
Related Read: How Can Businesses Ensure Cloud Platform Security?
Why You Need a Cloud Backup and Data Disaster Recovery Plan
Here are 5 Reasons why you must have a robust Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan:
1. Achieve Secure Off-site Backup
You may be checking everything on your data recovery plan – taking regular backups, checking that your backup equipment is functioning properly and all configurations are up to date. However, a fire in the building or a pipe burst that drowns your equipment is all that is needed to rob you of your critical data.
Once that occurs, you will also end up losing precious time recreating the data, which could cost you in terms of revenue and customer goodwill.
The way forward then is to store your data off-site and keep it safe from any kind of disaster. A disk-based cloud server automatically transfers data off-site for data protection and recovery. So, no matter in which form the disaster strikes, you can have control over your data within a few moments.
Also Read: How Can Enterprises Benefit from a Successful Cloud Migration
2. Free Up Time From Manual Backup Tasks
Tape-based data backup is time-consuming and complex. As an organization, you may have limited IT staff and rather than putting them to use in taking manual data backups, they would be more gainfully employed on strategic projects crucial to your business.
Cloud disaster recovery plans, on the other hand, take backups automatically. These solutions standardize and automate the entire data backup process, and so you don’t need IT staff at each location. Besides, these applications also equip your IT teams with the tools to manage and monitor all aspects of server data protection.
3. Simpler Budgeting
Cloud backup involves monthly service fee unlike traditional data backup solutions that involve acquiring software licenses for specific servers. With cloud computing disaster management, you are saved from associated costs such as software, media, backup hardware or maintenance.
With cloud backup, it is the service provider who bears the cost of the entire infrastructure and you benefit from a monthly service fee which is simple to budget and predict.
4. Guaranteed Data Recovery
Even if lightning strikes your building, you can rest easy knowing your data on the cloud is safe. It is not always possible to test your internal backups. Cloud backup automatically transmits changes in files and documents to a secure, off-site facility to ensure continuous backup at all times.
Modern cloud disaster recovery solutions not only protects recently changed files you have closed but also captures changes in open files ensuring that there is no disruption in the process flow.
5. Minimize Risk And Cost of Downtime
Cloud backup is not a single activity or a one-time event. Rather it consists of several interconnected processes, some of which are:
- Replicate backup to another device
- Transfer the backup to an off-site location to protect from both natural and human-made disasters
- Organize the data in a way that makes recovery quick and easy
- Recover replicated data from storage as and when needed and where ever needed
Conclusion
If you have lost data to a natural disaster or human error, or fallen victim to a cyber attack, traditional tape recovery methods will not hold you in good stead. In these competitive times, no organization, large or small, can afford to lose access to their critical data even for a few hours. To protect yourself from such vulnerabilities you need a cloud disaster recovery plan that includes cloud backup of data.
Cloud computing management solutions offer ease of use and a wide range of control – you can choose the functions to automate and yet retain the ability to manage and monitor the entire data backup process from anywhere and anytime. You can provide access to authorized users, who can simply login and through a user-interface, select the files to recover and restore them to any location.
These solutions automatically recreate data and capture system information, enabling you to easily restore a full system to an alternative hardware in any location of your choice with minimal IT assistance. In addition, cloud disaster recovery plan allows you several levels of protection which means you can protect data for specific types on a per-server or per-folder basis.
