As we head into a post-COVID world, today’s businesses face more cyberthreats than ever. In fact, cyberattacks increased by 400% in 2020. Though data breaches and system compromises are often associated with larger scale companies, small businesses aren’t exempt. Nearly 20% of small businesses will experience a cyberbreach, and 60% of those businesses will go out of business within six months.
Yet 43% of SMBs lack any true cybersecurity plan.
Cyber defense should be a top priority of any modern business, especially with today’s increasingly mobile workforce. In addition to setting up firewalls, VPNs, and virus detection systems, businesses should be implementing password requirements, multi-factor authentication, employee education, and more.
Still, even the best security plans can fail. That’s why businesses must also be prepared for a potential data breach and the fallout that comes with it.
The first step in protecting yourself from the loss of critical data is to establish a disaster recovery plan. A disaster recovery plan is an executable strategy for protecting critical information and restoring your systems in the event of a breach or server failure. It sets priorities, responsibilities, action steps, and everything else that needs to be done to get your most important systems back up and running.
An important part of disaster recovery is backing up your information. Without up-to-date backups, you can’t properly restore your systems and recover from disaster. Managed backups can ensure that your systems are automatically being copied and stored at a safe, accessible location. Even if you currently host your primary systems onsite, it’s a good idea to keep your backups offsite.
This keeps them safe from potential disasters such as fires, electrical outages, theft, and more.
In addition to storing primary backups and creating a disaster recovery plan, modern businesses should also have a business continuity plan. This essentially outlines what your business needs to do outside of restoring your critical systems. It also explores situations outside of hacking attempts.
A business continuity plan covers facility closures, acts of nature, infrastructure changes, and more. With a disaster recovery plan, a business continuity plan, and up-to-date backups, your business can be prepared for just about any situation. The question is how do you go about developing and implementing these?
Preparing for disaster starts with determining priorities, identifying vulnerabilities, and measuring risks. You’ll also need to establish RTO and RPO:
Recovery Time Objective – How long can you be down before it severely impacts business?
Recovery Point Objective – How much data can be lost without severely impacting business?
From there, you can start to outline the actions that need to be taken, when they need to happen, and who is responsible for them. We understand this is easier said than done. That’s why we want to help. Expedient Technology Solutions is an information technology company based in Dayton, Ohio that has spent the past 17 years helping businesses of all sizes implement cybersecurity strategies, disaster recovery plans, managed backup systems, and more. We know the questions and hurdles that stand in the way of modern businesses trying to protect themselves against today’s threats.
We know feeling confident in a disaster recovery plan is essential to your peace of mind, and that's where we come in.
Reach out today to speak with an expert who can help to guide you in your decision making process.