Security and Disaster Recovery: What You Need to Know

Outsourcing IT is a wise business choice, especially for the small business owner. But make the wrong choice and you just ramped up the security threat to your network. A lot of small business owners choose their outsourcing based on price alone, which can be a critical error.

Network security threats are unlike physical security threats. There are literally threats around every corner in the cyber world. You have groups that are dedicated to hacking into networks and causing chaos as a pastime. Data security management for business has to be a part of your outsourcing plan.

Security and Disaster Recovery Go Hand-In-Hand

Not to scare anyone, but no matter how tight a cybersecurity policy is, catastrophe can still strike. Having state-of-the-art security protection will minimize threats. But security alone is not enough to protect your precious data.

Backing up your system may not be enough. Backups can be corrupted, stolen, and be dealt with other blows. You need a complete disaster recovery system in place to ensure business continuity should a disaster strike.

Only about 72% of service providers offer disaster recovery support. Unfortunately, disaster recovery is often not high on the priority list, but it needs to be. There are real threats that can cause catastrophic failures that can leave your business unable to continue.

There are several reasons you need to choose a data management team that offers a high level of security and a data recovery program designed for your business including:

• Criminal acts. Cybercrime is on the rise. Corporate espionage and corporate terrorism attacking competitors’ data is a tremendous threat.
• Natural disasters. Nature has caused billions of dollars in economic losses over the last decade, and according to experts, that is going to continue. Having a recovery plan in place will ensure that your business can continue after a natural disaster.
• Failure of hardware. Machines will break down. Losing critical data is not an option because of machine failure.

Of course, setting all the catastrophe things aside, there is still the risk of human error. Saving information over critical information by mistake is a common error. Sometimes these errors cause minor issues, but in other cases, they cause critical errors.

Outsourcing IT management and data management is a good idea that delivers plenty of benefits, as long as the service provider offers the complete package of protection and solutions. Don’t settle for less than complete protection for your precious data.