A modern business stops working without IT. More specifically, it is data that keeps the wheels turning, in all kinds of industries. If it's possible to coordinate resources, respond to customer requests, or collect cutting-edge market information, nothing can happen without being able to keep the lights on. Most of us have left the era of inbound and outbound containers behind us, and businesses are looking to the power of the cloud to support the agility and capacity they need, managing becomes even more essential to everything they do.
About the Author Dan Middleton, Vice President UK & Ireland, Veeam. Much effort and attention is rightly focused on keeping these systems running. After all, trust and reputation are at stake if a company cannot maintain its service. Often this conversation is about security, given how often business owners are reminded of the impact of cyberattacks and the frequency of outages, as cybercriminals headline. The latest survey of cybersecurity breaches by the UK government, for example, found that almost half of UK businesses have suffered a breach or cyberattack in the last 12 months, with 32% reporting having suffered. incidents each week.
It's not always malicious
Cybercriminals regularly shut down systems and store data for ransom, and it's obviously important that companies have the right defenses in place to minimize their impact, as part of a broader data management strategy. But systems can also be threatened by acts of nature, misconfigurations and computer errors, or even simply human error. In the end, the result is the same: systems go offline, access to data is lost, and business operations suffer. Understanding a threat is the first step in being able to combat it. The best way to survive is to prepare and appreciate the real impact of what a failure could do to a business is a great first step. Examples like stock trading app Robinhood, for example, which has suffered multiple outages during a very busy period for financial markets, affecting customer confidence in the platform. A major outage could be enough to shut down a business permanently if systems are damaged enough or customer data is stolen. Customers will vote with their feet, and temporary replacements can quickly become permanent shutdowns if things aren't resolved quickly. What is the most important?
Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery and backup capabilities are no longer a "must have," even when a brief outage can be so devastating. They are inseparable from a company's larger continuity plans. Research from the Ponemon Institute, for example, has revealed that a typical outage costs up to €9,000 per minute. When business-critical data is so valuable, managing this challenge must be done carefully and intelligently, considering all the possibilities at play. A good place to start is to think about the place of disaster recovery in a company's overall strategy. This can be done by conducting an impact assessment, determining which applications and services are most important to operations and what is the maximum downtime they can handle before these operations are stopped . Payment processing systems, for example, may be particularly important to continue operating. From there, it is possible to calculate things like recovery targets. A plan can then be put in place with more confidence to respond if things don't go as planned, whether a company stores data on-premises, in the cloud, or a combination of both. It's important to remember, for example, that if cloud service providers can be an incredibly convenient option for businesses to rely on for their IT and storage needs as they grow, develop, and require more capacity, level agreements, service (SLA) generally do not offer any guarantee in terms of availability and uptime. It is the responsibility of the business itself to ensure that backup plans and strategies are in place to ensure that in the event of an incident, a basic level of service can be maintained while things return to normal.
A leadership priority
Proactivity is key, and to really test their capabilities, companies should also consider testing their data. Vulnerability to known attacks becomes much more apparent, and by creating sandboxes—isolated areas that make experimentation possible—IT teams can find weaknesses in systems and securely test their data before they don't happen online. a real situation. A good data management strategy takes the madness out of reacting to a system failure or problem. When there are so many issues at stake, business leaders need to respect the breakdown. Disaster recovery and backup software plans should be treated with the same importance as a physical fire drill, regularly tested and evaluated, with each involved in their specific role. When this is in place, it doesn't matter where the breakdown comes from – leaders can be sure they can get back to business as quickly as possible.