There are many threats to your workforce’s productivity – and surprisingly few of those can be directly due to the workers themselves. After all, they are bound to take cues from you – and so, as the business owner, it’s crucial to show some leadership when it comes to protecting the company.
There are a few ways you can counter such unfortunate possibilities as natural disasters, cyber attacks and the accidental deletion of critical data.
Take the 80/20 approach to prioritising data security
Does your business really ‘need’ all of the data at its disposal? As Computerworld makes clear, most of your company’s data isn’t crucial to business functions.
Hence, you should discern which 20% of your data would most warrant protection. Then, you can target more of your cybersecurity efforts at safeguarding this data – and figure out who exactly will need it in the wake of a disaster.
Decide on an acceptable recovery time
This is important because it will help you determine what storage medium you should use for backing up data. It might be inexpensive for you to transfer the data to a physical storage drive and keep this offsite – but, if a disaster does strike, it could take days for you to restore your data.
If you know that days would be too long for your company, consider a more immediately accessible storage solution, like the cloud.
However, diversify where you store backups
Here, it’s worth heeding what has been called the 3-2-1 rule – where you have three copies of the data that are stored on two different types of media, with one of the copies stored offsite.
That way, you will be able to account for a broader range of risks – meaning that, if recovering lost data from one particular source is out of the question, another option might remain available.
According to Milnsbridge Managed IT, implementing redundant hardware and systems for critical operations to minimize downtime is a must. Use load balancing to distribute network traffic across multiple servers and consider failover solutions that automatically switch to backup systems in case of a failure.
Install an environment monitoring system
Can you get an inkling that a disaster is on the way? Obviously, weather forecasts might warn you if there is the potential for flooding in your local area soon.
Implementing an environment monitoring system in a workplace especially sensitive to water, such as a data centre, could enable you to detect signs of an onsite water leak vulnerable to worsening.
Constantly monitor your corporate hardware
While an environment monitoring system can give you advance warning if there is the potential danger of water damage to any of your workplace tech, you should also take more of a manual approach – by keeping a close eye on that hardware yourself.
IT Briefcase recommends routinely “checking devices such as firewalls, workstations, and switches to ensure they’re in perfect working condition.”
Don’t just create a disaster recovery plan – test it!
Obvious though it might seem, you should actually write down your disaster recovery strategy so that you can prepare for it by utilising all of the appropriate measures.
Through giving that disaster recovery plan a ‘test run’, you can also watch out for any teething issues that, if left undetected and unaddressed, could have jeopardised your company’s resilience.
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