B&L Associates

Preparing for disaster correctly should be a priority

July 31, 2012

Businesses need to live more by Murphy's Law when it comes to preparing for the inevitable. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, so skimping on storm readiness or building a redundant backup in case the first one gets fried in an electrical surge could wind up costing the company its livelihood.

It's obvious that organizations are aware of the danger and want to have the most ideal business continuity infrastructure possible, but they aren't all doing what's best when it comes to strategy. A study by Sage North America found that while more than 90 percent of companies use backup storage for financial records, nearly two-thirds have only a single on-site storage solution for all these documents. That means if a tornado or flood should ever occur, there may not be any way to recover files even after the building has been repaired.

This could be a huge problem for the nearly two-thirds of organizations that have no disaster recovery plan in place. The Sage study found these businesses saw no need to develop strategies, despite knowing the consequences, as they'd never experienced a disaster previously.

There's no way to plan for a catastrophic incident after it's already happened. If there is no safeguard in place, the company may simply never recover and be forced out of business. Using backup tape could substantially increase the odds in favor of a company, but only if implemented in a multi-tiered fashion. Using a single backup is no longer an applicable strategy in a world where anything can go wrong and and sometimes does. In recent months, Colorado has been hit with massive fires. IT Business Edge reported last year's hurricanes knocked out power and destroyed infrastructure all across the U.S. With more than half of all organizations fearing a loss from natural disasters, they need to take action now before it's too late.