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Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning

Modern businesses run on data. Whether it’s something as simple as a customer mailing list and invoice records or a complex global enterprise, data is what keeps the lights on and the bills paid.

What is a Disaster?

It depends on who you ask. In 2011, the Joplin tornado destroyed the St. John’s Regional Medical Center. As a result, they’d probably give you a different definition than 21st Century Oncology after they revealed a data breach had released information on as many as 2.2 million patients. Two different medical providers lost countless records. In one case the confidential information literally ended up in trees. In the other, it ended up on the laptop of a malicious criminal. Both qualify as disasters.

What is a Disaster Plan?

A good disaster recovery plan looks at both internal and external threats. External threats include everything from a physical loss of the facility to fire or natural disaster to the loss of data from a breach of your computer systems. When you look at internal threats, you have to assess your exposure to things as mundane as an employee downloading a virus into your system to employee theft and industrial espionage.

The best disaster plans include people from all of your departments who can all throw in “what if” scenarios. Then applying principles of risk management, the threats are ranked on the basis of least probable to most probable and least damaging to most damaging.

Business Continuity and Disaster Planning:

Once your company has determined its threats, your team can work on business continuity plans. In today’s world, a key part of this plan is IT recovery. Not only must your data be recovered and secured, it must be accessible if your business is forced to move to another location after a fire or natural disaster.

One of the fastest ways to get up and running again is to use a secure cloud computing solution. Not only is your information secure, but it is also easily accessible. No more waiting for the retrieval and reinstallation of backup files. With a cloud solution, your employees can pop open a laptop and be back to work.

In a natural disaster, this is key if your business is part of the recovery framework, such as medical services, building supplies, or construction. In an internal disaster, such as a hack or physical compromise of your computers, a cloud-based system has your data protected behind another layer of security while still being easily accessed.

Regardless of your size or business, contact us at WHOA.com for a consultation on the IT recovery portion of your business continuity plan. We can craft a solution that works for your business and your budget.

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