Prevention is always better than to repair things. Only 6% of the companies that dont have an disaster recovery plan when they experience the loss of crucial company data will survive it. Although no one can predict when disaster will strike and what type of disaster will strike, we can and should always be prepared for it.
There can be a wide variety of causes in data loss, including battery failure, human errors, cyber attacks or weather related issues. According to Ponemon Institutes Cost of Downtime study, every minute of downtime for large organization averages $ 7.900 in lost revenue, per minute. In addition, they estimated that the average recovery time for such an unplanned outage was 119 minutes, meaning an average loss of $ 901,500!
Of course, this amount will be much higher, the bigger the organization and the more the business depends on their digital activities. Not ensuring a well thought-through data recovery plan could therefore significantly endanger the survival of the organization.
So, which steps should be incorporated into a data recovery plan? Well, according to Singlehop who created the below infographic, there are three different steps to take:
- Perform a Business Impact Analysis;
- Perform a Risk Assessment;
- Manage Your Risks.
Next to these steps, I would like to add a fourth step to the plan:
Communicate About It to Your Customers.
Whenever data crisis occurs, this will likely also impact your customers. Not correctly informing your customers could not only really hurt your customers, but as a result also endanger your business even more. So, whenever disaster strikes; act swiftly and communicate openly about it.
