IDC reports that nearly 1.8 zettabytes of data will be generated worldwide per year by 2025. Far too often that data goes un-protected. It gets worse: Ponemon Institute reports that 61% of businesses don’t have an incident response plan. Despite persistent threats of ransomware, hardware failure, or user error, many businesses are unprepared. Some of those without plans might argue that they don’t have the time or expertise to create plans and implement them—or so they think. In this piece, we’ll explore how easy it can be to create a backup and disaster recovery plan that helps businesses respond to everything from disasters brought on by Mother Nature to the fallout from a ransomware attack. We’ll also look at the role that a backup and disaster recovery appliance (BDR) plays in making the process simple and cost effective. Backing up data isn’t usually top of mind for small business owners, but it should be. According to Emsisoft, In 2019 there was a 41% increase in ransomware attacks compared to 2018. Accenture reports that security breaches have increased 67% since 2014. But losing data isn’t the only threat—downtime is costly, too. And, although downtime costs vary, Gartner reports that the average cost is a staggering $5600 per minute! For your small business to successfully protect its data, you must think beyond basic file and folder backups. Instead, a solution should help you back up data so that it’s safe from things like ransomware and human error, while also ensuring efficient recovery. Remember, recovery and backup are two sides of the same coin. With that in mind, the next step is setting backup and recovery objectives, so you know what you must do to keep data safe and recoverable.
Backup and Disaster Recovery Considerations
BDR and Recovery Objectives
Many small businesses make the mistake of choosing a solution without first setting goals. That’s a great way to waste money on an over-built solution or a budget option that fails when you need it most. So, before you look for BDR a solution, you should understand some disaster recovery (DR) planning basics. There are two metrics that matter.- Recovery Time Objectives asks the question “If my systems went down, how long can I be without them before the cost is too much to bear?” Is it a few hours? A few days? This metric helps you understand how quickly you must recover your systems if something goes wrong.
- Recovery Point Objectives asks the question “How much data can I afford to lose?” This metric helps you determine how often you need to take backups. Some solutions can take backups as often as every 15 minutes. That means you would at most only lose 15 minutes of data in a disaster.