Data protection is key to disaster recovery solutions. And, yet, Forbes reports 90% of small businesses don’t have data backup in place. It is truly an astonishing statistic. With trade secrets, intellectual property and entire businesses hinged on computers and servers, not having an effective disaster recovery solution in place are extremely risky.
One single catastrophic event can wipe out your entire net worth. Make sure you have at least some level of disaster recovery in place. IT specialists like Technical Action Group offer flexible solutions.
In this article, we help you select the right disaster recovery, solution provider. Following are some questions you should be asking of them.
Do they have a good reputation in the market?
There are few things more important than client testimonials and market reputation. Many disaster recovery solution providers will claim to have ‘industry-leading’ practices and techniques. But, all of that will come to naught if they don’t know how to protect clients.
It takes disaster recovery experience, talented people and planning to effect successful and rapid recovery. Make sure you receive good feedback about an IT services team before you choose them for your disaster recovery.
What should we protect and how?
If a services provider is offering a one-size-fits-all service, you are in the wrong place. Every business is unique. Your data and your needs are different too. What must be protected, how it must be protected, how quickly you need your data recovered from backup in the event of cybercrime or physical server loss, and how much to spend on it are questions a disaster recovery solution provider should answer to your satisfaction.
How long before we are up and running again?
Downtime means lost revenues for your business and disaster recovery has to offer speedy recompilation of your systems. An assurance of fast recovery times also indicates smart strategies and quality systems. Don’t be satisfied with the ‘same day’ recovery. Check if your data recovery provider can replace your data within a few hours, or for however long your business can tolerate being without its data.
The best disaster recovery specialists will talk planning. Everyone else will talk of ‘our latest software’.
How will our data be protected?
Recovering your data from a disaster is the last step. The first step in disaster recovery is having a strategy in place to:
- Identify data to be protected
- How data is to be backed up
- Setting an optimum backup schedule
- Prevent disaster event, if possible
If you don’t get the basics right, the effectiveness of your disaster recovery solution will reduce. Experienced disaster recovery specialists know that ‘recovery’ begins with process. Find out how your service provider is going to integrate with your existing systems.
Is data backed-up in the cloud?
Make sure your backups are performed over the network and your data is available in the cloud. It is an extremely responsible way of backing-up data, and one of the most secure. The only caveat: cloud servers should be securely located.
With cloud backups, there can be a question over where your data is stored. Reputed disaster recovery specialists will store data in their own servers or those by reliable and trustworthy companies. Even in which country, your data is stored is an important consideration.
Is our data stored safely?
A disaster can be localized, like a building fire. However, large scale events such as flooding, wildfire, terrorist attacks, and physical data breaches can impact entire regions. Make sure that your specialists follow a protocol to keep your data separated geographically.
Even physical storage, such as tapes and hard drives, should be in accordance with industry-leading best practices. This can mean fire-safe vaults, protection from water damage and access-restricted premises. However, tapes and hard drives as a backup media is not recommended as they do eventually fail, and rely on human intervention to remember to change the backup tapes and take them offsite daily, for safe storage.
Know your costs
Before choosing a disaster recovery solution provider, understand the pricing structure. Beware of hidden fees and costs. Moreover, clarify what charges will be imposed for disaster recovery.
Disaster recovery is a time-consuming process for an IT services provider and there are costs associated with data backup and retrieval. However, that should not preclude open and good faith dealings with you.
Technical Action Group is a trusted IT specialist and disaster recovery solutions provider for businesses small, medium and enterprise. Our ethos is to provide high-quality services at reasonable rates. And our responsive service is something clients always appreciate.
Get in touch with our team to understand how we can get your business protected from unforeseen events.
