A business continuity plan is essential to any company’s information technology (IT) infrastructure. Without a plan, recovering from disasters and other disruptions that threaten operations would be difficult. To ensure business continuity, managed IT disaster recovery (MDR) is your solution.
Due to the many benefits managed IT offers, the industry is growing fast and will reach $115.36 billion by 2030. This guide will explore disaster recovery and why it’s vital for businesses today.
What Is Managed IT Disaster Recovery?
Managed IT Disaster Recovery is a service that provides backup and recovery services for your IT infrastructure. It is a service provided by an external company that takes care of the backups, restores, and disaster recovery planning.
The following are some of the reasons why you should consider using managed IT Disaster Recovery:
- You can avoid downtime due to hardware failure or natural disasters because your data will be automatically backed up in real time to another location where it can be retrieved later. 67% of firms use cloud services as part of their data protection strategy today.
- You’ll have peace of mind knowing that someone else is managing all aspects of ensuring business continuity in case something goes wrong with any part of your network infrastructure.
Why Is It Important to Have Managed IT Disaster Recovery?
There are many reasons why it’s important to have managed IT disaster recovery. First, it helps you avoid downtime. If you don’t have a backup plan in place and something goes wrong with your systems, you could lose valuable data and suffer from lost productivity for days or weeks while trying to get things up and running again.
Second, managed IT disaster recovery can reduce costs by preventing unnecessary repairs or replacements due to hardware failure caused by system outages. It also prevents expensive downtime so employees aren’t left waiting around while their computers are being repaired, which could negatively impact their morale and productivity.
Key Considerations for Managed IT Disaster Recovery
When working with a managed IT disaster recovery service provider, you should ensure that they can meet the following key considerations:
- Access to your data: The first step in ensuring business continuity is making sure that you have access to all of your critical information. This means having an offsite backup that’s accessible and secure at all times. It also means having multiple entry points into this backup system so that if one method fails, another can be used instead.
- Control over your IT infrastructure: Your organization may have specific requirements or security protocols for managing its infrastructure. For example, if you require HIPAA compliance or PCI DSS certification for credit card processing services provided by third parties, ensure that any provider you choose meets those requirements before signing on with them.
Choosing the Right Managed IT Service Provider
Choosing the right managed IT service provider is imperative to ensuring business continuity. Here are some things to look for when choosing a provider:
- Specializing in IT disaster recovery solutions. A reputable provider should have expertise in providing solutions for your needs. This includes ensuring their team has the necessary skills and experience to give you the best possible outcome when it comes time for a disaster recovery plan.
- Proven track record of delivering results for customers like yours. When choosing a managed IT service provider, ensure they have successfully executed other companies’ DR plans before yours. This will give you confidence that they know what they’re doing.
Besides the above two, you must also consider the cybercrime understanding of the company. Disaster recovery is associated with the cybercrime that occurred in the first place. Hence, it is usually wise to choose a company offering a wide range of IT services, including anti-virus, penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, etc.
You will find a list of services any company offers on its website. For instance, Simple Tulsa, a managed IT services provider based in Tulsa, has listed all its services on its website. The company has also created individual landing pages for all the services to give readers more information about each service.
You can go through such data to find the right IT support provider for your requirements. Once you find such a company, contact them and discuss your needs to find out if they can help you.
Understanding the Unique Needs and Risks of Your Business
When it comes to business continuity, every company has its own unique needs and risks. Understanding these factors is crucial for developing an effective disaster recovery plan.
- What are the unique needs and risks of your business?
- What are the threats to your data?
- What are the threats to people?
- How will a disruption impact your reputation or brand image?
Identifying Critical Systems and Data
You must identify the most critical systems and data to ensure business continuity. This will help you determine how long your business will take to resume operations in the event of a disaster. You should start by listing your hardware and software assets, including servers, workstations, printers, and mobile devices. Then think about what could happen if these items were lost or damaged due to an emergency such as fire or flood damage at your office building.
Next comes identifying critical information such as customer records, employee records, and financial data such as credit card numbers used by customers when making purchases online. It is vital to identify such sensitive data because if you don’t know what to protect, how will you protect it?
Developing a Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan
The first step to developing a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is identifying the critical systems and data your business needs to continue operating during a disaster. The more robust your plan, the better prepared you’ll be for any eventuality.
A good place to start is by creating backups of all essential files, databases, and applications on an ongoing basis and testing those backups regularly so they can be used in an emergency.
If possible, consider using cloud storage services like Dropbox or Google Drive. This will allow employees access from anywhere while providing an additional layer of security against cyberattacks or physical threats such as fire damage at work premises.
What Benefits Does Managed IT Disaster Recovery Offer?
- Reduce downtime and the data loss risk by ensuring your systems are always up to date, secure, and backed up.
- Reduce costs by avoiding expensive hardware purchases and maintenance fees.
- Improve business continuity by having a plan in place for when disaster strikes. Your recovery strategy can be implemented immediately after an outage or disaster occurs so you’re back up and running as soon as possible.
- Increase productivity by providing employees with the tools to complete their jobs more efficiently.
- You can also guard against cyber threats, as criminals often look for loopholes in your business during a disaster. Ensuring business continuity is a vital tool for protecting against cyberattacks. According to an IBM report, all the firms using Business Continuity tools had a 74-day shorter breach lifecycle as compared to others who did not have such tools.
Conclusion
The right-managed IT disaster recovery plan protects your business from data loss and downtime. A comprehensive approach will ensure that your systems are monitored and maintained by experts who know how to handle a variety of scenarios. This is why it’s so important to choose a provider with experience in this area that understands your company’s unique needs.
