What’s the risk? That’s the primary question to ask as you define your recovery strategy. As risks are identified, you must understand:
All businesses will experience a disaster. It might take the form of a major flood, fire, tornado, earthquake, or other natural calamity; possibly something as unlikely as a massive regional power outage, even a terrorist attack; more likely, the loss or failure of a major IT service.
It has been estimated that companies lose an average of $85,000 for every hour of downtime. How much do you lose due to an hour of downtime? How long can your business survive if your IT systems crashed and were inoperable? How long would you remain in business if you couldn’t provide your product or service?
Your recovery strategy is the key. Having a means to back up your data is not a plan and certainly not a strategy. Some risks should simply be accepted as is and really aren't worth the investment to mitigate them. Other risks are the ones that can take your operations down for multiple days. Can you survive these risks? If so, how? At what cost? With a strategy identified, a comprehensive Business Continuity Plan (BCP) in place, and a trained disaster recovery team, your recovery efforts get critical functions back available quickly. Such a plan can help minimize the negative effects of an interruption in business, prevent minor disasters from escalating to catastrophic ones, and help businesses stay in business.
Huber Advisors stands ready to lead the development of your Business Continuity Plan, put it in place, train your people, and conduct drills so your business is prepared for any contingency.