Two Ways to Improve Data Resiliency in Your Business
The need to bounce back quickly from data-related disruptions in your business is obvious. Failures and outages cost thousands of dollars, often more for large corporations, and failure to protect operations from outages can cause as much damage to clients as it can to your bottom line.
Overcoming disruption swiftly with data resiliency is the solution to the disruption dilemma. There are two techniques to provide that swiftness, but first, you must answer the big question playing on your mind.
What Is Data Resiliency?
Data resilience comes down to availability.
In other words, when disruption occurs, what can you do to bounce back and ensure that the systems and software you need become available again as fast as possible?
The nature of those disruptions varies. Simple power outages cause problems, as do the cyberattacks that occur every 35 seconds in the United States. Those issues are outside of your control. But what you can control is both your preparations for encountering those issues and the actions you take when they occur.
Combined, preparation and response make up a data resiliency plan, and these methods help you make that plan as strong as possible.
1 – Create Regular Backups
The most obvious step is also one of the most effective – back up your data regularly.
But it’s how you back that data up that impacts the effectiveness of a data resiliency plan. Shoving massive datasets onto external hard drives that you keep on-site isn’t the right solution. Hard drives can break down, and being on-site means they’re exposed to the same problems that can disrupt your other systems.
Ideally, you’ll have a cloud-based solution that enables off-site backups and rapid retrieval of any data you lose due to an on-site disaster.
2 – Ditch Outdated Systems
Pinching a few pennies by sticking with legacy software and outdated hardware may give you short-term savings. But it’s an approach that leaves you vulnerable, as a Kaspersky report into the economics of IT management shows.
It found that 40% of companies that use outdated tech in America lose up to 50% more money when data breaches occur than those that keep their tech up to date.
The sources of those money losses vary.
The extra time taken to get systems back up and running is a big one, as is the simple fact that legacy systems offer less protection against hackers using modern equipment.
You lose more. That costs more. And you may be left with a situation where you can’t even recover the data you’ve lost, driving up costs as you’re forced to manually replicate what you used to have.
Make Your Business More Resilient
Two techniques – one simple and one most time-intensive – can boost data resilience in your organization. Making backups is the obvious one, and you may already do so, but you have to think about where those backups go and the hardware used to store them just as much as you do about making them in the first place.
From there, it’s all about your systems. Are they modern enough? Can you identify security flaws hackers could exploit and what are your estimates for getting up and running again if a breach occurs?
Answer these questions quickly because hackers are already asking them, and they’ll exploit any legacy systems that have chinks in their armor.
