The data at the disposal of companies is very crucial and by all means they are responsible to protect it. Any loss or theft of data can affect business continuity and seriously impinge on the profits of the company.

Every business needs the proven support and assistance of backup and disaster recovery services. While it is important for businesses to locate the right firm to entrust their backup and disaster recovery tasks, businesses must first know about what these terms actually mean.

Understanding disaster recovery

Disaster recovery planning is one of the most crucial and integral part of every business’s IT strategy. At a time when security breaches and network outages have become very common, this segment needs to be adequately focused on by businesses.

The decision makers in a company are often not clear about what a disaster recovery plan actually means. Most times, they go by the notion that data backup is sufficient to address any disaster. Though implementing the right backup strategy is important, businesses must know that it is not the same as disaster recovery. In fact it is only the first step towards implementing a proper DR plan.

The differences between backups and disaster recovery

Backups are done daily to see to that the data retention happens at a single location, for the purpose of copying the data. Disaster recovery needs determining the recovery time objective for designating the maximum time the business can sustain without IT systems and post disaster.

Data recovering possibility

Disaster recovery can be understood as the process in which you suspend your primary environment for some time in favor of an alternative environment in order to ensure your business continuity. Backups facilitate immediate access in case there is a need to restore a document. However, it cannot support the failover of the complete working environment if your infrastructure happens to be compromised. Backups do not include the physical resources needed to bring them online.

Need of additional resources

Backup is no more than the copy of data that has to be restored to the original source. Disaster recovery needs a different production environment for accommodating the data’s life. In this regard, the nature of the present environment must be taken into account which will include resources, connectivity, security and software.

Planning

Backup planning is very simple since the goals of this process are nothing more than meeting the recovery point objectives and data retention requirements. Disaster recovery on the other hand needs a comprehensive planning considering which systems are mission critical, creation of a recovery order and performing a valid test and ensuring a communication process. A sound disaster recovery service helps completely mitigate the risks and downtime.