Ensuring Data Resilience: The Importance of Orchestrated Recovery, Preparedness, and Testing

By Richard Massey, Vice President of Sales, Arcserve EMEA

In a recent independent global study commissioned by Arcserve, 41 percent of respondents said their organization’s disaster recovery plans weren’t updated. 

A recent article from SolarWinds says the cost of downtime these days runs from $427 per minute for small businesses and $9,000 per minute for larger enterprises.

But the same article says that your industry has a considerable impact on downtime cost, ranging from $90,000 per hour for media to a whopping $6.48 million per hour for the brokerage service industry. Regardless of where your business falls on that spectrum, ensuring your data is resilient and recoverable matters most. Because the costs of not doing so are high. 

Data Resilience Depends on Orchestrated Recovery

You need a well-defined disaster recovery (DR) plan and the right tools to minimize downtime due to a disaster or cyberattack. 

The most effective approach to mitigating the cost of downtime due to a disaster or a cyberattack is investing in an orchestrated backup and recovery architecture that ensures data resilience and keeps your operations running. 

That’s why the same Arcserve study noted above found that 77 percent of IT decision-makers are now investing in orchestrated recovery architectures. And that’s good news because backup and recovery are fundamental to any data resilience strategy.

Testing, Orchestration, and Preparedness: Three Vital Elements of Data Resilience

All kinds of variables and unknowns can come up during an incident. Sound backup and DR policies will ensure you are prepared—but only if you include a regular testing program in your policies. 

With DR testing, you can identify and document the procedures necessary to restore your operations and systems if an incident occurs. Once documented, you can validate your processes and fix potential gaps from policy and personnel perspectives. Testing is the only way to make sure that gets done.

Another component of data resilience is orchestration, where automation accelerates end-to-end recovery. With orchestration, your interconnected systems are recovered in the optimal sequence for meeting your requirements. Orchestration also identifies any intermediate steps you must take for validation at each stage, ensuring a smooth and orderly restoration.

Although we bring it up last, preparedness should be your highest priority. With 74 percent of breaches involving the human element, you need to train your employees so they can spot suspicious emails and attachments and avoid malicious websites. Testing should also be part of this process so employees can learn from others' experiences.

RPO, RTO, and Acceptable Downtime

You already have plenty on your plate. That can sometimes mean backup and recovery aren’t given the priority they should. That’s why you must conduct regular backup tests—quarterly, annually, concurrent with changes in systems or the organization, or more frequently, depending on your situation. Best practices dictate that setting a calendar for disaster recovery testing is crucial so you’re ready for a disaster anytime. 

Your comprehensive data resilience strategy must address two vital thresholds: recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs and RPOs). 

Your RPO determines the amount of data loss your organization can tolerate in an incident. It is the primary driver of your backup frequency, whether every hour, once a day or week, or as often as every 90 seconds, as Arcserve OneXafe network-attached storage offers with its snapshot feature. 

Your RTO determines how long your organization can tolerate being down before your systems are recovered, and your operation is fully functional following an incident. 

An Arcserve-commissioned independent study found that 83 percent of respondents said that 12 hours or less is an acceptable level of downtime for critical systems before there is a measurable negative business impact. But only 52 percent said they could actually meet their recovery time objective (RTO). So nearly half will experience a measurable negative business impact from downtime. 

The Arcserve study results highlight the gap between expectations and actual capabilities. That’s why you must improve your data recovery capabilities to meet your RTOs and RPOs. Closing this gap will help you mitigate the impacts of data loss and minimize downtime.

Preparation Is the Priority

With more businesses being targeted by cyber threats and ransomware, being prepared means being proactive. That includes understanding potential threats, mitigating risks, and developing strategies for recovery. 

A proactive stance can help you withstand any disaster.

Get expert help to put an effective data resilience strategy and backup and disaster recovery plan in place by talking to an Arcserve technology partner. Find a partner here.