Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
Helping the businesses in central Arkansas to always perform at their best and protect their data from disasters through quality recovery solutions.
Disaster Recovery Planning
The major function of business continuity and disaster recovery is to minimize the impact of disruptions on a company’s operations. It also allows companies to carry out their activities after any difficulty occurs, lowering data loss risks. Emergency management, alternative work locations, employee safety, and various other procedures are all necessary for any company to survive in the event of a catastrophe.
BizTek Connection is a premier disaster recovery and business continuity provider in central Arkansas, servicing both large and small businesses with recovering their data after any event. Their disaster recovery strategies offer the very best of cutting-edge technology and effective business continuity solutions.
Benefits of a Recovery Plan
Back-ups & Preparation
No one likes to have to deal with crisis management. However, preparing data backups and creating recovery procedures in the event of a disaster is vital for any business to prevent having to start from scratch.
Clear Plan of Action
Hopefully, a disaster never occurs. But in case it does, you don’t have to be one of the many companies that have no hope. With a recovery plan in place, you will be able to take action and begin the steps to restoration.
Less Down Time
It can be difficult to think clearly in the midst of a catastrophe. A Disaster Recovery Plan with an IT provider gives a clear direction for the steps to be taken. It also enables an organization to get back on its feet as soon as possible.
CUSTOM IT MANAGEMENT
Our Disaster Recovery Process
1
Create An Inventory List — Our first step would be taking a risk assessment of all the resources you have in your IT environment, including systems, hardware, and software. Secondly, we’d make a checklist of potentially catastrophic scenarios for your IT disaster recovery strategy. The focus would be on which systems would be damaged if there was a flood, hurricane, fire, or power outage on your premises.
2
Establish A Recovery Timeline — Once we have a log of your IT inventory, we can decide on acceptable recovery goals and timelines for systems that need to be restored back in commission. Businesses in the healthcare field, for example, may require a fast recovery timeline; other industries, on the other hand, might be able to get away with longer recovery times.
3
Communication – Everyone should be aware of the potential effects on IT operations, what should happen next, and who will be responsible for resolving them. In the event of a power outage or a slow internet connection, ask your staff how their employment may be affected. A strategy to communicate with your employees if there is a power or internet outage should be considered.
4
Back Up Your Data — Cloud storage, on-site data backups, and vendor-supported backups are some of your options when it comes to data backup. Physical, as well as cloud backups, have their drawbacks. Working with a reputable managed services provider can assist you in weighing the tradeoffs and determining which is the best solution for your needs.
5
Consider Insurance — Catastrophe insurance can be a beneficial option to consider if you’re concerned about the expense of recovery. This entails not only replacing your IT hardware but also considering the broader ramifications and losses that could result from a disaster. If this concept interests you, please consult with an insurance professional to create a comprehensive plan.
6
Test Your Recovery Plan — Twice per year, at least once, if not more frequently, conduct a test of your IT disaster recovery plan. Any holes you find during these tests should be meticulously documented so that further study and mitigation may be performed. Consult with a reputable MSP to learn about your options for repair and the steps to be taken to ensure the plan is acceptable.
Top 6 Threats to Business Continuity
Intentional Sabotage
No one likes to think that someone would intentionally sabotage or put a business at risk. However, every business must be vigilant about their security; whether it be arson, robbery, or financial and confidential information leaks. You can minimize this risk by ensuring a secure business location as well as a secure network.
Natural Disasters
Not only do natural catastrophes have a major influence on human health and safety, work environments, resources, property, and supplier transactions, but they also can destroy your IT department and make it difficult to get back on your feet. Have you considered a managed backup data plan and insurance?
Man-Made Disasters
Mistakes happen. Some are caused by human negligence, accidents, chemical explosions, wrong electrical connection, gas leaks, oil spills, or fires. If you provide your employees with proper training and keep your data backed up, you can minimize the risk of human errors and prevent your organization from a major loss.
Utility Failures
This disaster occurs when any utility provider can’t provide services for any reason. The main utility failures are usually the loss of electricity, communication, internet lines, or the disruption of water supplies. Any preparation that can be done to minimize downtime and get your business running will be a huge help later.
Cybersecurity Attacks
Cybercriminals are always trying new ways to gain unauthorized access to confidential data. Cyber attacks are a result of hackers finding loopholes in your network or any other resources. The most common cyberattacks are information leaks, ransomware, denial of service attacks, or SQL injection attacks.
Global Pandemics
These types of threats can cause huge issues for organizations by reduced labor supply, availability of employees, canceled client orders, and interruptions in getting the supply of materials. These obstacles might have less of an impact by having a plan in place that will help your business move forward.
#1 Threat to Business IT
Disasters can come in many forms- from natural disasters like floods and hurricanes to man-made catastrophes such as fires or power outages. But for most businesses, the biggest disaster of all is hard disk failure. Hard disks are the lifeblood of a business, housing critical data, and applications that are essential to operations. When they fail, the lost data can be devastating to any company.
But the real question is, what can be done to prevent or reduce the risk of hard disk failure and devastation? While we can’t prevent all hard disk failure, we can help you create a comprehensive plan with a backup that can be swiftly restored on a new hard disk at any time. Whatever your needs, our business continuity services are intended to help you to keep moving forward.
DISASTER RECOVERY PLANS
Why is a Disaster Recovery Plan So Important?
Unfortunately, none of us are immune to hard disk or internet connection failures. These can be caused by an innumerable amount of things. In order to keep your business going with as little downtime as possible, it’s imperative that you eliminate any single point of failure in your IT infrastructure. Having a disaster recovery plan that does this is the only way to ensure that a hardware failure, natural disaster, human error, or cyber attack doesn’t interrupt your service or cause data loss.
In a world of so many unknowns and might-happens, it’s mandatory that we protect ourselves and our assets from circumstances that have the capacity to ruin everything or cause major life setbacks.
Sobering Statistics
On average, over 40% of businesses that do not have a Disaster Recovery Plan go out of business after a major loss like a fire, a break-in, a storm, or sabotage. Good disaster recovery and business continuity plans will greatly increase your chances of recovery.
40% of companies still do not have a documented disaster recovery plan, and over a quarter admit to rarely to never testing them. Yikes.
Some Of The Technologies We Work With
Data Backups
Different Types of Disaster Recovery
Back-up
The most basic form of data backup involves storing information at an off-site data center or on a removable device. However, business continuity help will be minimal since backing up data will not include the IT infrastructure itself.
Point-in-time copies
Back-up copies, often called point-in-time snapshots, capture a copy of the database as a whole at a specific moment. This copy can be recovered, but only if it is kept off-site or on virtual machines that are not damaged in a disaster.
Datacenter Disaster Recovery
The physical components of a data center, when utilized correctly, can help to protect data and disaster recovery in certain situations. Fire suppression equipment, for example, will aid data and computer systems in surviving a fire.
Back-Up as a Service (BaaS)
This option involves purchasing backup and recovery services from an online provider. Instead of relying on an on-premises IT department, BaaS solutions connect systems to a private, public, or hybrid cloud managed by a third-party provider.
Cold Site
These solutions establish a fundamental architecture in a different location allowing employees to continue working after a natural calamity or fire. They don’t guarantee data recovery so other disaster recovery techniques must also be utilized.
Hot Site
Hot sites maintain up-to-date copies of data at all times making data management and recovery easier. Hot sites take more time to set up and are costlier than cold sites, but they can reduce downtime significantly, which might ultimately save money.
F.A.Q.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my hard drive is failing?
Sluggish performance, strange noises (clicking or loud component sounds), and an increased amount of corrupted files are all big indicators that the hard drive is failing.
These are typical symptoms of a failing hard drive and you should act quickly to preserve your data from being lost.
Is Disaster Recovery different from a regular backup?
Backups are the process of making records and keeping them in two separate locations to be restored in the event of a disaster. Backup copies of your data can be made on local hard drives, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, network servers, off-site data centers, cloud storage, and a variety of other methods.
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive approach that aims to secure your data and IT resources against failure while also making it easier to re-establish essential business systems after a severe disruption.
Basically, backup is just one of the key elements of disaster recovery.
What is the difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity?
Business continuity planning helps to identify all of the protocols required to keep a company’s operations running following a disruptive event. In other words, a business continuity plan attempts to address the problem of “How can we continue operating our business processes if something bad happens?”
On the other hand, disaster recovery planning focuses on the processes and resources required to restore essential IT infrastructure and services after a catastrophe. It addresses the issue of “How do we make a rapid recovery after something tragic happens?”
Disaster recovery is basically one of the essential parts of business continuity.
How does Disaster Recovery work?
Recovery from a disaster requires the replication of data and computer processing in a location that wouldn’t be affected by the disaster. When physical machines fail or data loss is threatened because of a natural calamity, failure of equipment, or a cyber-attack, a firm must be able to fully recover lost information from an alternative site where the data is backed up.
Ideally, an organization’s computer processing should also be transferred to a remote location to safeguard data and execute operations.
Why does business continuity matter for small businesses?
Small businesses are vital to the economy, making up over 99% of businesses in the United States. They are also a major source of employment, with nearly half of all American workers employed at a small business.
When a natural disaster or other emergency hits, small businesses can be some of the hardest hit. That’s because they often don’t have the resources or backup plans in place that larger businesses do. Losing critical data, facing downtime, and not being able to continue operations can be devastating for a small business owner.
Business continuity planning is essential for small businesses because it helps them protect their data, have clear recovery steps to follow in order to resume operations in the event of a disruption, and potentially lower financial losses.
How does BizTek test a Disaster Recovery Plan?
We assess the disaster recovery plan by first doing a walkthrough or review to be sure that the plan is practical. We will then make some test runs and “what-if” scenarios to evaluate how each employee or team member would react. Lastly, technical tests such as parallel tests and live/full-interruption testing will complete the Disaster Recovery Plan evaluation.
Businesses are constantly changing over time so it is important that your business runs these tests and makes a continual improvement in its efficiency.
Don’t be caught off guard in a catastrophe.
Statistics from JPMorgan Chase and Co. show that over 99% of the United State’s 28.7 million firms are small businesses. Many small businesses have not put any thought into making a business impact analysis in the event that a hard disk fails or a natural disaster occurs.
BizTek Connection is committed to providing our customers with the best disaster recovery and business continuity solutions available. We offer many different products for this purpose, including cloud-based backup servers, onsite storage units, offsite storage units, and hybrid solutions that use more than one of these options.
BizTek’s commitment to excellence in data protection has earned us a Top 3 rating for IT Services in Little Rock. BizTek offers quick support for all your needs. We’ll be there when you need us most — after a natural disaster or any other kind of emergency — so you can get back to work as quickly as possible.
Testimonials
What Our Clients Are Saying
Roger and his company are wonderful. I can call them up when my systems aren’t working the way they should and within hours, I am up and running again. I trust him to keep me plugged in so that I can do my job and stay on top of my business. I recommend him to anyone needing to keep their networks and their systems in top form.
Allison Harper
I can’t thank BizTek enough for their backup services. We’ve kept a disaster recovery plan for several years and we just had a hard disk fail on us over a month ago. I was still panicking that I’d lost everything but BizTek helped me restore the back-ups right away. Aside from a few new files that were more recent, we got everything back. Thank you!
Adam Reding
BizTek has been our IT service provider for 14 years since we started our business in Little Rock. I’m pretty techy but still come across computer issues that make me scratch my head and they’re always willing to help. I’ve actually been able to fix some things later on my own from watching them. They have years of experience and it definitely shows.
Ben Gallagher
Would your business withstand a disaster?
Don’t wait until your hard disk fails or a natural disaster occurs before you create a disaster recovery plan. By then, it might be too late and your data will be lost forever.
BizTek is a reliable and experienced partner in Central Arkansas to help you with your disaster recovery and business continuity plans. We offer a wide range of services to help you protect your business in the event of a disaster, and we can work with you to create a customized plan that fits your unique needs. Contact us today to learn more!