Downtime is like Kryptonite to today’s enterprises—too much will kill your business.
Your always-connected users demand near-100 percent availability from their applications and systems. Anything less, and you risk losing your customers to competitors that made high availability a priority.
In addition to requiring continuous availability, consumers are making data privacy and protection one of the top hot-button issues for enterprises. Failure to protect your user and employee data can cost your company revenue, reputation, productivity, and a lot of money in legal fees and regulatory fines.
Why a Business Continuity Plan Is Especially Important in 2021
Fortunately, we have said our goodbyes to the dumpster fire that was 2020. But that doesn’t mean we can become complacent. Lingering fallout from the past year and the unique challenges we face today should motivate every IT team to prioritize creating, reviewing, or updating their business continuity strategy.
COVID-19 has almost universally changed the way we work, whether it means shifting to a remote workplace, moving the business from brick and mortar to fully web-based, or figuring out how to ramp up innovation after a mass layoff. Few if any industries were left untouched by the pandemic.
If maintaining normal business operations in these uncertain times weren’t challenging enough, cybersecurity experts are expecting a highly active, very expensive year for ransomware and other cyberattacks. In fact, Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that in 2021, we will see global cybercrime damage costs reach $11.4 million per minute. Yep, that’s more than $11 million every 60 seconds.
The increased frequency of ransomware attacks can be attributed in part to our pandemic-destabilized work environments, but there is so much more to it than that. Ransomware tactics and technology are constantly changing and evolving, and as a result, attacks are becoming more targeted, more effective, and more destructive.
For example, ransomware gangs are using increasingly aggressive approaches to convince organizations to pay up, including:
Double extortion: Ransomware operators encrypt company data and additionally threaten to expose the data to the public or sell it on their leak site.
Intimidation: Cybercriminals use advertisements, social media posts, and phone calls to shame and pressure companies into paying the ransom.
Taking aim at your backups: Some strains of ransomware target and corrupt backups that aren’t stored separate from the company network. Without a clean backup, there is no fast recovery.
How Arcserve Can Protect Your Data and Help Achieve Continuous Availability
Although we are starting to see some positive predictions in the news, the reality is that businesses will be addressing the effects of the global pandemic on operations, productivity, and security for many months—probably even years.
This slow return to normalcy makes it more important than ever to find a partner who can help you deliver the high availability your users demand and the data protection solutions you need for peace of mind.
Arcserve Continuous Availability can help your organization proactively prepare for unplanned outages and ensure business continuity through any crisis, whether natural, man-made, or technology-based.
Here are some of the core features and capabilities Arcserve Continuous Availability uses to maximize data protection and keep business-critical systems and applications fully operational during and after a disruption:
Asynchronous, Real-Time Replication
Replicate data in real time so you can shift the focus from recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) to continuous protection.
Heartbeat-Powered Automatic Failover
Trigger automatic failover using heartbeat technology to eliminate lag time between failure detection and issue mitigation.
Ability to Work in Dissimilar Hardware and Environments
No need for a collection of expensive replication tools. Our asynchronous technology is storage independent and protects data wherever it is stored—DAS, NAS, or SAN.
Continuous Data Protection for Every Platform and Environment
Prevent downtime with high availability and data protection for your Windows and Linux applications and systems whether on-premises, remote, or cloud-based.
Critical Event Monitoring
Monitor all critical events, including global server failure and database service failures. When a critical event is detected, servers automatically failover or switchover to maintain availability.
Point-in-Time Rollback
Replicate byte-level changes at the file, application, and full system levels so you can rollback to any point in time and restore data as it was just before a system crash, data corruption, or ransomware event occurred.
Centralized Web-Based Console
Simplify and increase visibility with a single management interface for easily implementing automated nondisruptive testing, real-time server performance monitoring, and SLA reporting.
Secure Data Transfers and Encryption
Transfer data with AES-128, AES-256, or custom-level encryption between local and remote locations without the need for a VPN.
High availability and comprehensive data protection are not optional in today’s always-on, data-obsessed business environment. If you can’t provide your users with the level of performance they need, they will quickly move on to someone who can.
Arcserve Continuous Availability ensures business continuity with technology that minimizes downtime and protects data across all of your on-premises, remote, and cloud-based applications and systems.
Download Smart Strategies for Business Continuity to learn more strategies for maintaining operations and protecting data during an unplanned disruption or disaster.
