With more and more stories of natural disasters coming through, it’s normal to feel apprehensive about what’s to come, especially if you’ve invested your time, effort, and finances into making your business the best that it can be.
Thanks to modern technology and forecasting, we usually know a disaster is approaching before it strikes. However, knowing a storm is coming isn’t always enough to save your business from shutdowns. With the right steps, you can ensure your business and its IT infrastructure is safe, secure, and ready to weather any storm that comes its way. That’s where Mirazon comes in!
IT Vulnerability Effects: What Can Happen After a Disaster?
Wherever your business is located, natural disasters can shake up your IT infrastructure and affect overall performance. Whether it’s a powerful tornado or an extended drought, each type of disaster comes with unique challenges and emergency protocols.
Looking at the bigger picture, these events can disrupt daily operations, impact finances, and even affect employee safety. Without reliable IT disaster recovery services, your company could be left scrambling to bounce back from these setbacks.
IT Server Outage
When a flood, hurricane, or tornado hits, the first thing you’ll likely face is a shutdown. Nearly half of organizations experience unplanned outages that lead to system downtime. Without power, accessing data becomes impossible, and the risk of security threats increases.
Cyberattacks
IT failures and downtime can open the door for cybercriminals to infiltrate your business’s systems. Once inside, they can spread malware, steal sensitive data, and create a pathway to financial losses. Protect your business by proactively preventing and mitigating cybersecurity breaches with strong information security practices and a layered security strategy.
Cost Burdens
Natural disasters and their fallout can take a big hit on your budget, making recovery a real challenge. On average, businesses lose around $150,000 from these events, causing setbacks across multiple areas. Investing in an IT disaster recovery plan early isn’t a sunk cost—it’s a smart move that can save you significant time and money down the road. As we at Mirazon like to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
How to Develop a Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan
While we can’t control natural disasters, you can plan to protect your IT systems through anything that comes your way. To build an effective recovery plan, stay proactive and take these key preventive steps before disaster strikes.
Find Vulnerabilities in Your IT System
Think fast: do you know the weakest links in your IT system? Companies that ignore their vulnerabilities face real risks, with over 25% unable to reopen after a disaster. To keep your business running strong, it’s crucial for you and your team to identify and address these weak links—before it’s too late.
Create a Data Backup Plan
You can take a few simple steps to protect your data before a threat arrives, like following the 3-2-1-1-0 rule. Start by keeping duplicate records stored off-site to make sure your information stays accessible—even if your main location is impacted. Regularly updating these records also ensures you have accurate information on hand, which can save you valuable recovery time after a disaster.
Train Employees
Let’s not forget the heart of any smoothly running business: your employees. With the right training, your team can become your strongest line of defense in any situation. Prepare your staff for potential natural disasters, especially those common in your region, and establish clear emergency response procedures. Set up and schedule regular drills to ensure safety across the company.
Your staff should also go through our steps of security awareness training so they know what to look for and how to handle cyberthreats and shutdowns. The steps include evaluating, training, testing, reporting and repeating the process to continuously educate employees.
Develop a Communications Strategy
Once the storm has passed, it’s time to consider your next steps. How will you update your customers and employees after a natural disaster? To save yourself some stress and time, create and maintain a contact list with phone numbers, emails, and addresses for your customers and partners. This way, you can communicate quickly and efficiently after a disaster. When everyone is feeling overwhelmed, you’ll be the reliable support they can count on.
Build With Disaster Resilient Infrastructure
If your business is situated in a high-risk area for natural disasters, it’s important to fortify your physical office spaces and facilities. To minimize potential damage and protect your assets, think about rebuilding or upgrading your current facility to better withstand disasters. If you find yourself – or business – in this situation, here are some resilient infrastrucutre strategies you should consider:
- Relocating buildings in danger zones
- Elevating office buildings
- Utilizing permeable pavement
- Building floodwalls
Invest in Data Protection
Our IT managed services can help protect your IT systems and corporate data with expert backup processes. Mirazon’s 3-2-1-1-0 rule ensures your data’s safety with three backups on two different types of media — one offsite and one in the cloud.
Do Disaster Recovery Plans Work?
Mirazon’s Managed Services can help your brand weather natural disasters with minimal downtime, saving you time, money, and protecting your sensitive data. Take Gaille Media, for example—a marketing agency that was hit hard by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and lost its office to flooding. Thanks to their preparation and cloud storage for documents and records, they avoided severe damage and bounced back to full operation much more smoothly than others in their industry.
Cloud solutions have become essential for disaster recovery, enabling companies to access their data from anywhere with an internet connection. Moving your IT system to the cloud offers numerous advantages, including improved monitoring, enhanced security, greater flexibility, and a more streamlined infrastructure.
Count on Mirazon for Your Disaster Recovery Plan
At Mirazon, we’re here to protect you, your business, and your data from the impacts of natural disasters. We know how vital continuous uptime is for your company’s success. That’s why our experienced team is committed to providing you with top-notch continuity tools and practices. Our backup and disaster recovery plans ensure that you can save your data, no matter what comes your way. Don’t let system downtime put your business in jeopardy.
Reach out to us today to develop your comprehensive disaster recovery and incident response plan to make sure your business, employees, data, and reputation aren’t at risk.