Running a business involves dealing with unforeseen setbacks
and interruptions that may lead to downtime and productivity
dips. Implementing a strategy to manage such setbacks
and ensure business operations run smoothly with minimal
disruption is referred to as business continuity.
Events like a pandemic, natural disaster, power outage, hardware failure or employee
negligence, can disrupt operations. Business continuity involves advanced planning
and preparation that focuses on ensuring that an organization is able to operate critical
business processes even in the wake of a data-loss incident.
Two key components that work cohesively as part of an organization’s business
continuity plan are:
Backup
Disaster recovery
After an incident, your organization should get back up and running as well as recover
critical data as soon as possible to prevent unnecessary productivity and revenue losses.
Defining Terms
is the process of creating secondary copies of business-critical data that can be used to restore the original file in the event of data loss. It's
important to note that while backup can't prevent a data-loss event, it can help an organization restore lost data after a data corruption or
deletion event.
Disaster recovery
on the other hand, may be described as a set of policies, tools and procedures focused on protecting an organization from the adverse impacts
of disasters like data corruption events or accidental deletions. The major aim of a disaster-recovery plan is to ensure the smooth running of
critical functions during and after an emergency event in order to minimize business disruption.
BCDR combines a set of approaches or processes that help an organization
recover from a disaster so it can resume its routine business operations as soon as possible.
Deploying an effective backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solution is imperative to ensure
minimal loss of data and productivity even after severe disasters and business disruptions.
A comprehensive BDR solution not only helps restore any lost data but also ensures that a business
can quickly get back on its feet after a setback.
With more businesses embracing long-term remote or hybrid work models that require their
employees to work remotely for some or all of the time, having the right BDR solution and business
continuity plan is becoming increasingly essential.
We’ll discuss more on that later. For now, let’s examine why many businesses fail to realize the importance of BDR.
Why a BDR Solution Is a Worthwhile Investment
Deploying a quality BDR solution is vital to ensure your business continues to run smoothly, even in the event of a security breach or data loss.
While there are several ways you could lose your critical business data, backing it up with copies enables you to restore lost data from an
earlier point in time, helping your business recover from setbacks faster.
On-premises backups help in creating copies of data and storing them in in-house storage devices such as network-attached storage, disk or
tape backups and storage servers.
With most businesses embracing hybrid work models, their remote systems and off-network devices are now more exposed to potential
cyberattacks and consequent data loss. That’s why it is imperative to deploy a BDR solution that takes care of the data on your remote
endpoints as well. It’s important to note that while BDR alone does not prevent cyberattacks or accidental deletion, it can help you restore
information after a data-loss incident occurs.
As per the 2020 Cloud Security Report, 69% of businesses believe that data loss/leakage is their top cloud security concern.7 Organizations
lose cloud data every day, even from Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce. In fact, 77% of companies that use SaaS applications
report suffering at least one data-loss incident within a 12-month period.
It goes without saying that securing your data in the cloud is indispensable to
disaster-proofing your business. You need a BDR solution that helps back-up and