dr-planSo far in 2016 I have seen too many cases of small businesses losing data.

Instances include someone dropping their laptop and losing all data without any backup, being infected by a virus in a small office, having a hard-drive crash and discovering the backup had not been running when it was needed. All these cases could very easily and inexpensively been avoided.

With IT budgets tight, or in many cases, non-existent, businesses cannot afford to deal with a disaster such as loosing business information or client records. Disaster Recovery (or Business Continuity Planning) is fast becoming a must have. After all it is not rocket science and a plan can be developed rather simply. It is often just a case to getting it done as when left in-house it rarely happens.

The problem of a disaster is not only the downtime and associated cost of repairing systems and recovering data which can easily run into the many $1,000s. The loss of your customers’ trust and damage to your reputation can have a very long impact on your business as you loose custom and income. Trust and reputation are very much worth protecting against these situations that can be avoided with a plan and appropriate systems in place.

Having a plan along with a sound backup and procedures can help you not only recover fast but in some cases avoid such a situation in the first plans. A plan helps you prepare and increases your protection and reliability of systems and backups.

One example is the regular checking of your backup to ensure it is actually working correctly. This sadly is a situation that many people find themselves in just when they need a file and realise the backup is not working. Test your backup today!