The dangers of not having a disaster recovery plan are myriad, from soft costs of lost productivity to more concrete charges such as mailing letters to notify customers of an outage or breach. These costly situations can damage organizations of all sizes, making it difficult if not impossible to recover without extensive damage control. However, creating a disaster recovery plan takes time and effort away from critical business objectives. How can you justify the effort needed to create a comprehensive plan when it’s hard to predict when — or if — the plan will ever be used? Use these 3 hidden benefits of a comprehensive disaster recovery plan as part of your justification for skeptical business users.
1. Protecting Customer Relationships
One of the key concerns today for customers is the security of their data when they’re making a purchase online, on the phone or in a physical store location. Massive data breaches are reported on a regular basis, and some organizations never fully recover from the negative publicity that goes hand-in-hand with major system failures. The stated costs of downtime can be as high as $5,600 per minute according to Gartner analysts. Unfortunately, truly catastrophic losses of multiple days gives customers plenty of time to consider exactly how loyal they are to you. When you’re able to get up and running again quickly and efficiently — and with a solid communication strategy in place — you’re instilling confidence in your customers and keeping them within the fold.
2. Reducing Vendor Charges
Any time you are not able to accept shipments as expected or pay your bills for more than a few days, you’re likely to start racking up various charges from vendors and other partners. It’s also important to consider that not only are the charges continuing to roll in, sales are likely to be reduced during the same time period. Industry professionals note that companies that are unable to fully resume operations in 10 days or less are unlikely to survive. That’s a pretty tight schedule if you’re a small organization with limited internal resources.
3. Retaining Compliance
Becoming compliant with today’s rigorous standards can be quite a process — one that can be quickly undone by a serious disaster that affects the security of your data. PCI compliance is one of the security standards that is often touted for eCommerce, but how much time does it take to regain your compliance rating after a data breach or other disaster? Depending on the types of compliance your organization is required to maintain, you may be facing expensive re-certification before you’re able to proceed with operations. Third-party compliance assessments are not cheap, There’s also the possibility that bringing systems back online after a physical disaster such as hardware failure, fire or flooding can leave your systems vulnerable to cyber attack.
The high cost of veering away from critical business objectives and taking the time to create a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is time well spent. Data breaches, malware and other disasters are a common occurrence for organizations of all sizes, with simple issues such as hardware failure and power outages being the leading causes of unplanned downtime for businesses. Coretelligent is your trusted partner to mitigate these risks, with our CoreBDR solution providing you with a state-of-the-art solution for data protection. CoreBDR enables secure rapid backup and restore functionality for businesses of all sizes. Learn more and request your free initial consultation by calling our knowledgeable professionals toll free today at 855-841-5888.
