What happens if you haven’t done a test and the backup equipment you use fails after a disaster obliterates your business? It doesn’t pay to get complacent about disaster recovery plans. Far too many businesses don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place at all, and even if you have one in place, it is easy to put testing that plan on the back burner.
Doing a Disaster Demonstration
It’s always challenging to imagine what could happen to your business in a disaster unless it actually happens. A demonstration test gives you at least some idea of what might happen if your business becomes wiped out due to natural or man-made situations.
While you can’t predict every type of disaster, it’s smart to analyze any potential disaster based on where you’re located. Obviously, if you’re in hurricane country, you can include that. The same goes for earthquakes, even though many natural disasters occur now in unexpected places. Don’t forget to prove how you’d fare with human disasters like database errors, or being the victim of ransomware.
If you buy uninterruptible power supplies from companies like Cyber Power, your tests can prove how dependable these are if you lose power for hours or days.
Alternate Points of View
When doing the demonstration test above, it’s better to have an outsider conduct the disaster scenario so you get a wider point of view. You may think you and your staff understand every potential disaster, yet you may miss something. Or, you may just create convenient scenarios you consider easy to solve.
With someone else who has no invested interest in your company, you’ll get more realistic situations. It’s more than likely that when a real disaster occurs, it’ll be something you didn’t see coming.
Using an Independent Person to Conduct Your Test
As above, you need to seek outsiders to give a less biased demonstration test. By having a professional tech auditor in your premises, you’ll have another alternate view on whether you’re using the right equipment, or what the potential fail rates are.
Those who do professional tech audits know the realities and can help guide you toward the best technology choices. In many cases, they’ll guide you to data cloud backup solutions with more reliable and faster recovery times. Companies like Intronis bring excellent data cloud solutions that can help you conduct a disaster test with more confidence.
Scoping Out Technology Weaknesses
Using more expert opinion on your disaster recovery equipment, you get a more realistic view of what has the most weaknesses. Hosted solutions and backups for your mobile devices need testing as well to make sure they run efficiently during critical moments.
Again, the cloud helps with cellular backups, and tests won’t fail you as you might discover with another third-party server. Immediate accessibility is top priority in your testing since every hour of downtime is a huge money drain for any business today.
You want to know you can go to another place and get your business back on its feet immediately without getting excuses for backup solutions not being ready.
Contact us here at TIE National, LLC where we can help recommend you on how to get a smart disaster recovery plan in place.
Michael Durante spent his teenage years into his early 20s climbing the ladder in a branch of a successful banking firm, starting as a teller and ending as a Sr. Branch Manager within 6 years. In 2003, he left the banking world to join his father and create TIE National, a telecom company 60 years in the making. Together, they grew the company from a two-man operation solely working on telephones to a multi-million dollar international business with employees in over a dozen states, covering everything from phone systems to cloud products and computer systems. You can find Michael on LinkedIn.