The devastating fires that have ravaged California in late 2018 are a stark reminder of how swiftly businesses can be wiped out by a natural disaster.
For Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the Butte County fires in Northern California hit home. Rodgers grew up in Chico, where many displaced victims of the deadly Camp Fire have been housed.
Rodgers has pledged $1 million for relief efforts in the county, urging others to contribute to the thousands who lost everything due to the fires.
For San Jose-area businesses, the fires are an opportunity to assess their preparedness for natural or manmade disasters. Many are looking for business IT services in San Jose CA to help them develop the right solutions that will keep their companies operational during and after a catastrophic event.
What Is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery is the most fundamental process used to restore operations after a cyber attack or natural disaster. Once company sites are accessible, business systems can be restored. Then data backups are retrieved, either from the cloud or tape, and loaded back onto the systems. At that point, operations can resume.
However, for companies with on-site servers and backups, or with small IT staffs, the recovery efforts can take days or weeks. In the meantime, your company is incapable of resuming operations. That’s why business continuity is the more sound approach.
How Is Business Continuity Different?
Business continuity is a much broader, strategic approach to recovery. With business continuity, companies develop a comprehensive plan, including the policies, procedures and staff roles necessary to minimize operational disruptions.
Business continuity strategies rely on data and system backups, remote storage and careful planning that can be called upon when the need arises. Without a practical business continuity plan, your company may find itself out of business if a disaster occurs.
What Are the Components of a Business Continuity Plan?
Working with a San Jose business IT support company to develop your business continuity plan is a smart decision. The right IT company will have the experience, knowledge and tools to help you quickly build, test and deploy a plan that meets your business continuity needs.
Along with the development of policies and procedures, a business continuity plan has to include a data backup strategy. Data backups should be housed in the cloud and copied to different physical locations to minimize disruption.
Your data backup plan needs to include rigorous physical and digital security features to ensure that information is protected while at rest or in transit. Backups should be scheduled frequently to ensure that there is little to no data loss in the event a stored data set is needed.
In addition to data, your business continuity plan should include a complete image backup that copies your operating systems, applications and users.
When a disaster strikes, the backups your company has made will be critical. Your company won’t be reliant on the physical infrastructure being accessible and functional. Instead, your IT support company can create a virtual copy of your data and systems, allowing your employees and customers to access data and applications via the cloud from anywhere.
How Can I Be Sure My Business Continuity Plan Works?
Testing and validation are the keys to being confident in your plan. Your IT partner should conduct testing and validation procedures that will evaluate readiness, including:
- Interviewing employees to assess awareness and knowledge of the plan
- Holding drills and simulations to test the plan
- Evaluating drill results and identifying flaws or needed improvements
- Revising the plan as necessary
Who Can Help Our Company With Business Continuity?
Veltec Networks helps San Jose-area companies develop, deploy and test business continuity plans. Should a disaster affect your business, you’ll have peace of mind knowing our services will keep your business operational during and after a disaster with little to no downtime. To learn more about Veltec Networks’ business continuity and data backup services, contact us today.
