Studies have shown that 93% of companies without Disaster Recovery (DR) who suffer a major data disaster are out of business within one year. Yet only 50-60% of enterprises and 75% of small businesses have no DR objective in place. Though there is definitely a cost as well as a fair amount of effort that goes into a solid disaster recovery plan (DRP), the cost and strife of not having one as part of your overall business continuity plan (BCP), can be astronomically greater.
The Frog and the Scorpion
If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s the quick summarization:
A frog let’s a scorpion hitch a ride on his back to cross a treacherous stream,even though he knows that it’s probably nota good idea. But he does it anyway,and in the end, they both end up at the bottom of the stream. We don’t need to get into the various interpretations on the moral of this story, but the reasonI mention it is that it illustrates a common problem with risk taking. The frog makes a logical assumption that the scorpion won’t sting him if it means they would both die. Unfortunately, logic itself doesn’t prevent bad things from happening, and we all know what they say about making assumptions.
The same holds true when businesses think about disasters. Many make the assumption that disasters are rare, and not worth the worry. It may be fair to say that natural disasters are uncommon, but it’s also fair to say that they can have a devastating effect on your infrastructure. And with the ever-increasing weight placed on reliable and secure data, damage to your infrastructure can expand far into every aspect of your business.
Let’s add more to the fire, shall we? The definition of a “disaster” also now includes data-related disasters including hardware failure and cyber-attacks.In 2019, It’s expected that 57.6% of Government organizations, 73.5% of educational organizations, and 74.5% of retail organizations were at directrisk of suffering data breaches or compromises.[i] By 2021, cyber crimes will cost $6 trillion per year worldwide. [ii]
So,the reality is, the chance of a disaster occurring at your company is higher than you might think.
The Cost Factor
Historically, building and maintaining a disaster recovery site, while critical to ensure business continuity, was often too costly and complex for most companies. Replicating an entire data center, with all its equipment, management, cooling and power needs, is a huge expense.
Incomes the Cloud to save the day. More and more businesses are looking towards the Cloud for their infrastructure needs. This is evidenced by the continued pace of growth in public cloud IaaS spending, which grew 38% in 2019 to a worldwide total of $49 billion.[iii]
However, as much as you’d like to think that it’s as simple as moving your business-critical apps and data to the cloud and then your good to go, think again. In the case of cloud-based DR services, one size doesn’t fit all. Since mission-critical data and applications differ from company to company, each business must assess their current infrastructure and define how much downtime they can tolerate before business suffers.
The good news? You may already HAVE many disaster recovery elements in place and might not know that yet. As far as the DRP goes, many businesses that have virtualization technologies already installed can leverage this technology in normal operations as well as disaster conditions with a little upfront planning.
Closing Thoughts
Combine the higher probability with the lower threshold, and all of a sudden, it’s clear that there’s only one answer to the title question “Do You Really Need a Disaster Recovery Plan?” Yes, yes you do.And if you still aren’t convinced that it's not as daunting as you first thought, perhaps “The 5 Steps to Get Started on a Disaster Recovery PlanChecklist” will help ease your concerns. Better yet, give GCSIT a call. We can guide you in making disaster recovery an integral part of your agile infrastructure.
Read more about Disaster Recovery in the whitepaper “Key Considerations for your Disaster Recovery Planning,”where we discuss the DRP toolbox and further define the steps you should take to get started on your DRP journey.
[i]IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Public CloudInfrastructure as a Service 2020 VendorAssessment
[ii] Imperva 2019 Cyberthreat Defense Report
[iii] Cyber Magazine: Special Report: Cyber warfare In The C-Suit
