Business Continuity - Making Your Data Secure When You Need It Most

The events of the hurricane season of 2005 have once again made disaster preparedness a topic of much discussion. Along with insurance, facilities, and human resources issues, business leaders are discussing information systems. How quickly could information systems be fully restored in the event of disaster? How much data might be lost? What would be the costs, direct and indirect? How would the business cope with the effects of downtime and data loss?

My Data is safe and backed up, right? So why worry?

Most managers now know the basics of preparedness: vital data should be processed on reliable computers in a safe, clean environment. A full copy of data should be backed up to tape or other media on a regular basis, and incremental or differential backups should be done daily (or more often if needed). A recent full backup should be kept off site in a secure place. Older media should be replaced. Any error messages that occur during backup should be resolved. Data restore should be tested quarterly.

Despite increased awareness and training, companies still suffer data loss. In a recently concluded survey of IT executives, 75% of respondents indicated that their companies suffered unrecoverable loss of corporate data - data that they thought had been successfully backed up to tape - due to unreadable, lost or stolen media.

Even if data backup procedures are followed, restoration of information systems after disaster can be a long and costly process. Data cannot be restored until damaged facilities, servers, network infrastructure and connections have been replaced. Clearly a more expedient solution is needed to assure business continuity.

Redundancy: a better solution

Large corporations have addressed the need for business continuity by building redundant platforms, maintaining their applications and data on identical computer systems in different locations. This redundancy provides continuity with minimal interruption and data loss if one data center is damaged or destroyed. The cost and complexity of this approach, however, are considerable.

New technologies make redundancy affordable

A better alternative is now available. Leapfrog has designed a business continuity platform for small to mid size organizations. Using a combination of effective new technologies and best practices, this platform provides the versatility and reliability of redundant data centers without the high cost. It enables businesses to recover quickly if servers are damaged. Information Systems operations can resume in alternate locations if primary facilities are destroyed. Low implementation costs and monthly fees make this solution a good fit for small to mid-size businesses and professional firms that cannot risk prolonged interruption of information systems or data loss. For details, see the Business Continuity Services page of our web site.

Leapfrog provides other facets of disaster preparedness, too:

Tape backup monitoring, management and error resolution
Online backup of critical data to a remote data center
SecureMail Plus for email retention, archiving, redundancy and continuity
CTO-On-Demand for assistance with strategic planning, implementaion and oversight

Are you at risk?

How do you know if you need business continuity platform services? It simply comes down to this: If downtime or data loss would cost you revenue, clients, or competitive advantage, then you should consider this solution seriously. The need for disaster preparedness applies to businesses of all sizes, even those far removed from natural disasters and terrorism. For information and statistics, see the business continuity services page of our website.

If you feel that your business is at risk, contact Leapfrog Services at 404.870.2122 or at www.ribbit.net. We can help you assess your level of risk and present findings and recommendations. In addition to disaster preparedness, we can discuss options for managing your computer network, email, and technical support for your staff. Sleep better starting tonight - call Leapfrog.

This article originally appeared in the December, 2005 issue of FrogTalk.