If your network crashes in the middle of a workday, do you know how you will recover data? Do you think that your business could continue after a large-scale data loss? If you aren't sure about these questions, your business continuity could be at risk of failure. When you assess your business and consider how you will bounce back after software failures or unexpected events, you should consider your data resiliency.
Data resilience strategies are critical to preserving your sensitive data through disaster and failure. Your business might be able to withstand and avoid damage from hackers, power outages, and other dangers, but no defense is perfect. Every business experiences losses eventually. The important things are how well you prepare for the inevitable and how you proceed after the worst happens.
What Is Data Resilience?
Data resilience describes a company's ability to recover, protect, and replace lost data. If you have disaster recovery strategies in place, you have at least a little bit of resiliency. This concept is essential to discuss as a business owner, now more than ever. Thanks to a growing remote workforce and increasingly internet-connected business climate, data losses are more common than ever.
Cyber-criminal activity is always on the rise, especially as we come to rely on the internet for day-to-day activities. That’s why businesses must invest more resources into their business continuity, data management, and cybersecurity infrastructure.
What Are the Benefits of Data Resilience?
Data resilience is a best practice for companies that want to put their best foot forward. When you invest in a comprehensive data resilience plan, you invest in a reputation-building display of better data protection. When you guide your data backups and recovery point objectives with data resilience, you gain the benefits of:
- Better data loss defenses
- Improved reliability for clients and remote employees
- Less downtime when you enact disaster recovery scenarios
- Better compliance with data retention regulations
Ideally, these come together with your disaster recovery planning to produce a smooth and painless experience when you bounce back from damage. This plan can save you from the public embarrassment of a long, drawn-out recovery process and prove to the public your commitment to safety and damage mitigation.
What Makes Up Data Resilience?
Data resilience measures are not one-size-fits-all. Your situation will inform and direct your data resilience strategy, as will your industry and business structure. That said, there are a few directives you should follow when considering your data-resilient business operations:
Backup, backup, backup
Backup and recovery processes are critical to any business's long-term success. You must protect employee, client, and customer data at every step of the business experience.
Cybersecurity is Constant
Cyber attacks can happen anytime, so a 24/7 cyber security team is necessary. Cyber threats are always searching for new techniques and opportunities, so your team needs to be on top of the latest threats.
Look to Industry Best Practices
Your industry will have specific needs and ideals in data practices. A construction firm probably won't be guided by HIPAA as a medical practice, but it must follow its own data privacy and security regulations.
Recovery Speed is Critical
You need to minimize any downtime that you experience after a disaster. This situation can be challenging to predict. If your server dies, what caused it to go down? If your data is breached, what was accessed and altered? So, your recovery procedures need to be comprehensive and flexible.
How to Design a Data Resilience Strategy
When you design your data resilience strategy, you should consider your recovery goals. How much of your business do you need to get momentum back? Your recovery point objective (RPO) should be the minimum goal of disaster recovery. Recovery time objectives (RTOs) are critical. These are the goal time for how quickly you bounce back from disaster and get to your RPO. Having sharp goals and finish lines in mind will help minimize downtime and better direct your efforts.
Your recovery time objectives should be roughly as long as your business can survive without critical data, applications, or other technological functions. A simple strategy guided by RTOs would entail:
- Disaster recovery planning
- Data storage resources and backups
- Disaster recovery software
- Full-company awareness and training
- Frequent RTO and RPO testing
Securing your data via high-quality cybersecurity data protection software is a good start toward data resiliency, but it shouldn't be the end.
Invest in Your Business with Data Resilience!
While you can't predict cyber-attacks and natural disasters, human errors are inevitable, and computer errors are just as expected. When these potential threats to your backup and recovery process occur, you need a data resiliency strategy that protects your organization's data and ability to bounce back. When you work with an experienced and knowledgeable technology services company, you get the benefits of a team that understands the needs of a disaster recovery plan.
Trust in a company that has aided countless companies in maintaining data resiliency, business continuity, and preventing data breaches. Trust in Integrated Technologies. Call us today to learn more about our benefits to your organization's ability to maintain data resiliency and stay ahead of the worst.
