Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery plans and effective business continuity solutions are vital for all organisations.

With a growing number of threats, the ability to recover quickly from an incident can make the difference of an organisation staying in business or not.

What are the threats to organisations?

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. More damagingly though, they can also suffer from reputation damage that makes it difficult to trade and attract new business.

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

Disaster Recovery And Business continuity solutions

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

Cloud backup – Ensures your business data is replicated safely offsite in our reliable datacentres. Vital in case IT hardware is damaged, stolen or fails, or if business data is lost through a malware attack.

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 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.

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.