Survival in the modern business world requires strong backup and recovery plans. Companies can no longer sit back and wonder if something will happen, but must plan what to do when something does happen. Disaster recovery needs to be addressed immediately before disaster strikes. . . .
T professionals and their businesses have learned the hard way in recent years that disaster can strike at anytime and that they must be prepared. Companies unable to resume operations within ten days of a disaster hit are not likely to survive, stated a study from the Strategic Research Institute. In an attempt of protection, upwards of 60-70 percent of companies begin a disaster recovery plan, but never finish due to the overwhelming and complexity of plans or they gets put on the back burner. However, the business costs associated with network downtime and data loss make secure backup and recovery an economic necessity. A recent study by Pepperdine University states that 40 percent of data loss stems from hardware failure and 29 percent from human error. Thus, specific procedures for creating backups and a plan of action for recovery are essential to any modern business wishing to secure storage.

Prepared Plan with Regular Performance Checks

Data loss can result from many factors, including: fire, power outages, employee theft, viruses and hackers, as well as modern tragedies that can leave companies without access to buildings and important documents. Preparation is the key. Those who are prepared have a better chance of overcoming losses with minimal damage. The first step is to back up the system regularly. Often times the problem isn't that companies are not creating backups, but that they are not verifying the efforts. This results in "false backups" where data is believed to be secured, only to find in an emergency the backups failed and data has been lost. This is especially true with tape backups as tapes can be more easily corrupted, damaged, worn out, or employees can forget to change the tapes. In either case, it is too late and data is already lost which can often take weeks, or even months for these systems to be restored, if ever. Therefore, it is extremely important for companies to follow best practices and create policies and procedures for creating regular backups and for testing their recovery environments. Among these policies should be regularly scheduled test recoveries in order to ensure that backup policies and procedures are working properly. Recovery events should be conducted once a quarter to make sure backups are running as planned.

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