The One Point - Plan to stay operational with disaster recovery

It's a common misconception that disaster recovery and business continuity are the same. But this is not true. What the two concepts have in common is that they are both essential strategies for safeguarding businesses operations. Still, they intend to solve different problems that your business may face.

Business continuity (BC)

Best described as the overall plan for maintaining a business's operations during a disaster. This plan spans the whole of the company, including people, places, logistics, supply chain, communications etc.

Disaster recovery (DR)

Best described as a subset of business continuity and is focused on restoring IT services and data access.

Some of the things a DR plan covers include:

An outline of essential actions.
Who is responsible for these actions.
What systems need to be accessible.
And much more.

When disaster strikes

Disasters come in all forms: ransomware, environmental, human error, data corruption, etc. Your business will need a DR plan to guard against whatever may cause a hardware failure. A good DR plan acts somewhat like an insurance policy in that it is essential to return to normal. Yet businesses frequently consider this an unnecessary cost guarding against something they may never use. Yet, those businesses that invest in a DR plan find the savings far from trivial when their DR ensures BC.

Underfunded and under-resourced

When disaster hits other businesses, they often dig out dusty old DR plans for short periods. The rest of the time, they suffer from being underfunded and under-resourced. DR plans are even ignored in the face of real disaster simply because those needing to act were not even aware of their role.

Get started with a range of DR options

At The One Point, we have helped many businesses thrive in the face of disaster because our expertise, products and services have been available in their time of need.

We start with a risk analysis; this looks in depth at the problems that your business is likely to face and weighs them against the impact they have the potential to cause. A DR plan will help organisations decide precisely where they should spend their DR budget. Most often, the priority is safeguarding irreplaceable data. After this, we will consider how your business can get back up and running with minimal disruption. After all, customers may need its services more than ever in the face of disaster. A lesson learned in the pre-pandemic world is not to underestimate the value of those busies we take for granted.

The first course of action for businesses with no DR plan is establishing a backup procedure. Including daily backups of all data and, in an ideal world, operating in a separate location. This foundation proceeds with a 3-2-1 strategy involving three copies of all data, with two stored locally on different mediums and the third stored off-site. We recommend all data be time stamped so your business can easily pick up where you left off.

An effective DR plan may seem overwhelming, but that need not be a concern with a team of experts ready to guide you. At The One Point, we are experienced in developing robust data protection plans for customers. You can say goodbye to dealing with complex, repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

Credible and trustworthy

Credibility is another vital consideration a business needs to consider when deciding whom to help with their DR plan. Choosing the wrong support system can be costly in unexpected ways regardless of whether a disaster strikes. Costs are never more evident than when a business analyses why it did not win lucrative contracts only to discover a poor DR plan to be the cause.

There is a reason our values are Helpful, Responsive and Trusted. Our business operates on a rock-solid foundation worthy of some top-class trust marks. These are awarded only to companies demonstrating the ability to meet global benchmarks to offer protection.

We are very proud to be meeting ISO 27001 Information Security Management System.

We are very proud of our Microsoft Double Gold status in Productivity and Cloud Solutions.

In addition, we are very proud to be Cyber Essentials Plus certified, which helps us pass on our expertise to our customers so they can reap the benefits too.