Disaster Recovery

Effective business continuity solutions are vital for all organisations of all sizes.

A disaster recovery solution that allows your organisation to quickly get back up and running after an incident can make the difference between staying in business or not.

Disaster recovery: The threat landscape

Disaster recovery is usually considered for protecting against a catastrophic event. Fire, floods and natural disasters are what usually come to mind.

While plans do need to be made for these threats, there are other threats that can hurt businesses just as badly. These include:

• Theft of IT hardware
• Server and IT hardware failure
• Hacking
• Malicious activity by employees
• Interruption of internet connectivity

And then there are viruses and malware. In the age of ransomware, an entire server, with all of your business’ key data, can be rendered useless in minutes.

Based on Akita’s experience, a business is far more likely to face one of these other threats than a catastrophic event.

The damage of data loss

The effect of losing business data is serious; over half of all businesses that experience major data loss close within two years.

Then there’s the GDPR dimension to consider. Organisations that lose personal data (through hacking or a malware attack, for example) are in breach of the regulation. Any breach must be reported to the ICO, and should they judge that data loss is through negligence, can lead to fines.

In some industries, having an effective disaster recovery plan is also a regulatory requirement. Companies that are found lacking can incur fines.

Often more damaging though is the impact on company reputation. Businesses can find it difficult to trade and attract new business. The cost of winning back customer trust may exceed the cost of recovery by some magnitude.

It is therefore vital to ensure that an appropriate disaster recovery plan is in place for your business.

Disaster Recovery & Business continuity solutions

Akita offers a wide range of managed IT services that are designed to form part of a larger business continuity plan. These include:

Cloud backup – Ensures your business data is backed up safely offsite in our reliable datacentres.

Data Replication – An image-based backup solution, offering a fast way to recover entire servers and ensure business continuity.

Hosted desktops – Running your organisation’s desktops from a cloud environment increases flexibility and security. If a PC is stolen or destroyed, all data is held within the cloud so staff can access their work from another PC or device.

Anti-virus and anti-ransomware – Prevent viruses and malware from damaging your servers and PCs

Hosted VoIP – A hosted 3CX VoIP phone system can allow for all your business’ calls to be run from staff mobile phones should your office phones be rendered out of action.

4G backup internet connection– Internet outage can be costly for a business. Our 4G backup solution can power office systems, Wi-Fi and VoIP phones if your main connection drops. As it runs on 4G, it’s far less susceptible to infrastructure damage that can often impact a backup internet line.

Recovery Planning

Our team of IT consultants can also help you to create a thorough disaster recovery plan. This can encompass security audits and vulnerability scanning to identify the weakest points in both your IT networks and internal procedures.

Our consultants can also identify vital hardware and system improvements that will reduce the chance of business disruption. They can also advise on staff training schemes that reduce the threat caused by malware.

For more information on business continuity solutions and disaster recovery services, please get in touch.