SMB & Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR)
Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) is the process of identifying, planning, implementing, testing, and maintaining an effective disaster recovery strategy for small businesses within a specific industry. The goal of BDR is to ensure that if a disaster does strike your company you will be able to recover without regional or national interruption.
In today's society, every small business is automatically part of the Internet community. Small business benefit from access to a worldwide workforce and can quickly integrate with other businesses quickly. However, this multi-national accessibility has presented small businesses with new challenges in protecting the critical applications that keep them up and running.
BDR is a solution to this problem. It provides small businesses with a plan for recovering their services in the event of a disaster.
To implement an effective BDR solution, you must first assess your existing IT infrastructure and network to assess your risks and vulnerabilities. You must then develop a BDR strategy that will be responsive to these risks and vulnerabilities, while at the same time maintaining both an operational budget and critical business continuity priorities.
NET DIRXIONS BUSINESS SOLUTIONS - Data Backup
Disaster Recovery vs. Data Backup. Data backup is the act of storing a copy of files or data to a separate storage location so that in the event those files are lost or damaged, they can be restored. Disaster recovery is the act of restoring those files and data.
Fully Managed Backup & Disaster Recovery
Fully Managed Backup & Disaster Recovery
If the power in your office fails tonight, and all of your computers crash, how quickly can you recover? And more importantly, at what cost? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 93% of companies that experience a disaster go out of business within 5 years – even if they can recover in the short term.
We’re here to ensure your business doesn’t become another statistic. Our business continuity solution is about more than just backup – it’s designed to quickly revive your network following any unplanned downtime, and ensure your employees are operating productively in almost no time at all.
• Complete end-to-end management of backups
• Block-level encryption
• Continuous Data Protection technology
• Fully-managed & monitored
• Cloud replication
• Off-site virtualization
Unparalleled Peace of Mind
In today’s always-on business landscape, maintaining an effective backup and disaster recovery (BDR) strategy is becoming more important than ever before. Data is playing an increasingly critical role in decision-making processes, and the costs and risks associated with downtime are skyrocketing – not to mention the damage your brand and reputation can suffer in the event of a disaster.
Net DirXions’s business continuity solution includes features like continuous data protection, cloud-based replication and recovery, and more – all for one low fixed monthly price per protected server.
What does that mean? It means you can rest easy knowing that your critical data, emails, reports, and other information are all protected, backed up and securely tucked away until you need them.
Direct Support
Having a backup appliance in place is only the first step in a successful business continuity strategy. To minimize the risk of data loss as much as possible, you’ll want to have technicians proactively monitoring the entire backup process to ensure things are working as expected.
That’s why we’ve got a dedicated team keeping a watchful eye over your protected servers, ready to jump into action should any problems arise. And if the worst should happen, don’t worry – we’ll have you back up and running quickly.
DATA SECURITY IS A PEOPLE PROBLEM!
There are some things that only humans can fix. 95% of all security incidents involve human error. Ashley Schwartau of The Security Awareness Company says that the two biggest mistakes a company can make are “assuming their employees know internal security policies” and “assuming their employees care enough to follow policy.” There are many security risks to which your data is susceptible, but there is one method that remains a wonderfully effective hacking tool. That is the phishing scam. This scam is a legitimate looking email that asks the reader to click on a link. If clicked, the link can infect the user’s computer with malicious software that can steal passwords, logins, and other critical data. Alternatively, the email appears to be from a legitimate source, perhaps even duplicating a legitimate webpage.
The distinction is that the phishing email asks the user to enter personal information, including passcodes. In either case, that is how hackers easily get into your systems. What’s the best defense against this one? The single biggest defense is education. Training your people to be constantly wary of all the emails they receive. One way some firms are educating their people is by sending out their own “fake” phishing scams. Employees who click on the link inside are greeted with a notice that they've fallen for a phishing scam and then are offered tips how not to be fooled in the future. Think of it as the hi-tech version of Punk’d.
You may not be ready to go that far, but it is important to provide ongoing training to all of your staff about phishing scams. Your staff are critical factors in your data security plans. To avoid falling into these traps, you must: a) have a plan, b) educate users about your plan, c) make them care about procedures. To give a quick summary, you need to have a defense plan for each of the layers that a hacker can attack: the physical layer (i.e. you need policies to ensure that only authorized personnel can access your devices), the network layer (i.e. make sure that only authorised devices access your network, and your devices only access authorized networks), and the human layer (i.e. you should make your employees practice good password hygiene and are aware of security threats).
You should train employees on your security and disaster recovery policies at least twice year, and your IT person should keep your employees up-to-date on security issues on a weekly basis. Make sure that they understand the risks of a breach.
Most importantly you need to create a “culture of security,” where employees go beyond the minimum guidelines laid down by your IT staff and always ask “is this good security sense” for every action they take. You need to have clearly defined penalties for those who practice bad security, and reward those who display good security sense.
Disaster Recovery Plans: Do You Have One?
Disaster Recovery Plans: Do You Have One?
Disaster recovery and business continuity plans are issues that almost all small businesses fail to think about. More frequently, they decide they haven’t the resources to address such “unthinkables.”
If your business was down for 1-2 days or more, what costs would you incur?
Lost revenues and lost productivity. These are obvious. You won’t make the money that you would have if you remained open. This is especially true if you provide a service. Services are inherently tied to time, and time cannot be re-created. Sure, you can work extra hours next week, but it won’t be a service provided at the time it was expected. However, even if you provide a product that can be purchased next week instead of today, a customer didn’t get it when they most wanted or needed it.
There are other far more serious consequences of business downtime than just unsold goods and services. There are the intangibles that can’t be so easily measured but have long-term consequences. For example
Helping the competition – You give your competition a real edge. Present clients and potential ones may go to a competitor while you are down. Not all will return. Your competitors now have ammunition against you to use in sales pitches.
Employee frustration – Employees will carry the burden of the extra hours and stress of helping get things back together. That can lead to a lot of frustration, which if things don’t get back to normal quickly, can damage long-term productivity. Most importantly, it can damage the respect they have for management (that means you). In general, they will recognize that you didn’t have the foresight and wisdom to anticipate the need to create disaster recovery and continuity plans. How can that not damage their trust and support for the company and you?
Negative brand reputation –Your customers will also wonder how you couldn’t have cared enough to make plans to handle trouble. Think of the negative way a customer sees it. The event suggests a company that doesn’t think ahead. A client is not “off base” to feel angry that you didnt care enough to make plans to support him if a disaster hit. Also, if you can’t handle disasters well, what else aren’t you handling properly?
These are just a few of the reasons everyone needs to consider disaster recovery. To learn more, see our e-guide “Staying Alive: The Definitive Guide to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for Small Businesses“.
Why Small Businesses Shouldn’t Avoid Making Disaster Recovery Plans.
Why Small Businesses Shouldn’t Avoid Making Disaster Recovery Plans.
Entrepreneurs and small businesses, especially ones that are fairly new, often don’t think about making plans to recover in case of a disaster. However, it is the smallest business that most likely has the fewest resources to fall back on in case of disaster.
Why does this happen?
- It isn’t on an entrepreneur’s radar – The challenge and hurdles of starting out are what drive small business owners. The excitement that comes with getting a new client or releasing a new product are what motivates them. To be honest, things like disaster recovery plans are a little dull and aren’t part of the exciting day-to-day hustle of running a company. As a result, these issues get put on the back burner.
- Planning tools can seem too complex – Ideas like “risk assessment” and “business impact analysis” can be intimidating. Many SMBs may just feel the whole area is overwhelming and leave it to another day.
- It is perceived to be unaffordable – Many owners may believe that putting disaster recovery plans into place involves a lot of additional spending on consultants, backup hardware and more software. That isn’t true. With cloud technology and the use of a managed service provider, disaster recovery doesn’t need to be an intimidating or expensive proposition.
To learn more, see our e-guide “Staying Alive: The Definitive Guide to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for Small Businesses“.