Any interruption of trading for your business is a disaster whichever way you look at it. Because of this, you will need a plan of action to hand to ensure that you are well prepared if the worst does happen.
What is business continuity?
Before you make your plan, it is probably useful to know why you are making one in the first place. Business continuity means that you carefully set out a plan to keep your essential business functions working or quickly recover them to an operational state following a serious incident or disaster.
The right business continuity software can help you to protect your data and keep your business running when such incidents occur.
What are the leading causes of data loss?
There are a number of causes of data loss which you need to be aware of.
- Hardware or system malfunction – Includes electrical failure, media crash and controller failure.
- Human error – Includes accidental deletion and trauma caused by a drop or fall.
- Software corruption - Includes failed backups and configuration complexity.
- Computer viruses – Includes boot sector, file infecting and polymorphic viruses.
- Natural Disasters – Includes fires and floods.
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Why do you need to plan?
According to a 2011 study, 25% of businesses have no business continuity plan. There are a number of important reasons why business continuity planning is so important.
- The annual cost to US businesses due to data loss was £12 billion. With all of your data on your customers, suppliers and more at risk of being lost, it will take a long time for your business to recover from the financial hit from data loss.
- Companies experiencing a computer outage lasting longer than 10 days will never recover their full financial capacity.
- 50% of companies experiencing a computer outage will be forced to shut down within 5 years.
- 80% of businesses without a well-structured recovery plan are forced to shut down within 12 months of a flood or fire.
What should you do now?
Now you know the importance of continuity planning, but what now? You should look into finding the appropriate software to help protect your business. You should look for a system that:
- Protects your trading operations from systems failure
- Maximises server and network uptime
- Utilises the most advanced modern technologies
With this implemented, you can be sure that your systems will be protected for the long term.
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