There are many reasons why your business might experience an IT disaster, including user error, hardware failure, natural disaster and cyber attacks. The devastating consequences of these problems can reach far beyond your computer systems and end a once flourishing company.
But why do so many businesses fail to recover from these IT disasters?
Many small business owners seem to embrace the often spoken line “What’s the worst that could happen?”. With Business Daily reporting that 82% of small business owners believe they won’t ever experience a cyber attack, is it any surprise that an estimated 68% of small businesses don’t have a disaster recovery plan?
When many business owners think about disasters that could critically impact their company, they think about events like natural disasters, cyber attacks or even politically driven trade wars. They think less about the fact that their only backup is stored on-site, or that their IT staff could accidentally format the wrong drive when doing IT maintenance. Their disaster recovery plans cater for the absolute worst case scenario, but don’t take into account the many other less noticeable events that are equally capable of destroying their businesses.
Many business owners lack IT knowledge, putting their trust in their IT managers to keep their digital systems up and running. This is all fine and dandy until, for example, an earthquake hits their data center and the only person with the disaster recovery plan is in hospital having their tonsils removed. What remains is an IT team with differing ideas on how to fix the problem, when all they should be worrying about is executing on a documented and well-thought-out disaster recovery plan.
This might sound like an exaggeration, but the reality is nearly 40% of businesses do not have their disaster recovery plans documented, an issue that will make an already bad situation worse for any organisation.
Unless a company has adequate liquid capital or a very generous insurance policy, chances are they will be forced to cover costs for an issue (or issues) they weren't expecting when an IT disaster strikes. This could include relocating, service providers still requiring payment, or downtime that exceeded the estimates in their disaster recovery plan. These costs can snowball out of control, leading to bankruptcy:
Even if their IT manager has a well-documented disaster recovery plan, and the company has insurance to cover the costs of the disaster, they may still take a major knock for one simple reason: the disaster recovery plan was never tested through practice. In a world where companies regularly run fire drills to ensure their staff are prepared to evacuate a building, it’s odd that 23% of companies will never think to run an IT disaster recovery drill, despite the undeniable impact downtime has on a business.
Regardless of the reasons, there’s no doubt that the best way to ensure your company survives an IT disaster is by preventing any of these scenarios from taking place. The best way to do this is with Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). To find out if your business needs DRaaS, or if it is disaster ready, click here to use our disaster readiness tool.