As the saying goes, a disaster isn’t a matter of if –— it’s a matter of when. Sure, it may sound like a clever marketing slogan, but ask any IT professional, and they will attest that this statement is as true as the sky is blue. The funny thing about disasters is they don’t discriminate. They have the potential to stall the operations of companies small and large alike.
Whether it’s due to a security breach, hardware failure, or employee mishap, outages have many causes –— and a single incident can spell disaster for your business. The ever-looming threat of excessive downtime is plenty motivation to convince senior management to think beyond just backing up and invest in a professional disaster recovery (DR) solution. We’re here to help you make a compelling case.
There are differences between data backup and disaster recovery. While both aim to protect your data, they are not one in the same. At the core, a backup plan entails creating copies of your data to make available should the original data sets be compromised. According to the general rule of thumb, backups offer the best protection when stored in the cloud or another secondary environment. Advances in backup software ensure that the process is effective and simple. However, merely having access to your data isn’t always enough to guarantee a swift and full recovery.
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, is configured for larger scale data protection initiatives. Perhaps the most significant differentiation lies in the fact that DR covers all the bases necessary to get your systems back and running. This includes creating copies of your data as well as defining recovery objectives, coordinating response efforts among staff, and testing those backups to ensure they can be recovered. Think of it like this: backup is just one of several components that round out a complete disaster recovery plan.
