In today’s computer-dominated world of business, there needs to be a continuous availability of electronic data and hence, backup and disaster recovery of electronic data is very essential. For a business to sustain success in this very competitive environment, online transactions are the main attraction for the customers and channel partners. Backup and disaster recovery thus acquires a prominent place in the successful operation of the business. This recovery process is the combined effect of all the myriad policies and activities minutely planned by any organization to ensure that there is no loss of the electronic data. Most organizations today aim to maintain a paperless office, so not much information is stored on paper and the electronic medium is utilized mainly.
Even with the most advanced protection systems being in place to prevent damage to the stored data as well as the storage devices, there may be an occurrence of an unforeseen event like a fire on the premises or a natural calamity like a flood or tornado which will devastate the entire building. To preserve the data, an efficient backup and disaster recovery procedure is a must. This procedure has to be planned well in advance and should take help of sophisticated methods and devices to administer the storage and recovery. The use of backup discs or tapes may be made use of.
Also, such backups may be stored at different secured locations so that if the premise where the original data is stored is affected by any disaster, then these backups will be available for recovery. Another method of backup and disaster recovery procedure may be to copy the data to a server or location different from the original premises. With the availability of the Internet, facilities providing a backup and disaster recovery procedure are easy to operate. There are many systems as well as organizations who offer such services of storing your data on their servers.
Organizations should feel it more economically to spend a part of their frugal budget in guaranteeing that they have an effective backup and disaster recovery program in place rather than bear the astronomical financial loss on the data being lost and in some cases, recovery is not even possible. A successful backup and disaster recovery plan will be based on the time tested axiom of ‘prevention is better than cure’. Though it may be impossible to predict or control the damages from natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, there can be installed systems for prevention of data loss due to human negligence or mistakes. Even felonious acts of sabotage can be averted with an effectual backup and disaster recovery plan in place.
We all know that in certain cases, loss of data may not be able to be prevented, thus there should be methods incorporated in the recovery plan to help detect events which may lead to such loss. These detection methods should go hand in hand with measures formulated for the correction of the detected malfunctioning and for recovery of the data. Any backup and disaster recovery program implemented should allow for fast and near total recovery of the lost data. Any time lag or if most of the critical data is lost then the recovery plan is not good enough for the organization. In such cases, it is time to switch over to a better backup and disaster recovery plan to safeguard your organization. Think ahead and prevent circumstances where you might cry over split milk.