Key Features to Look for When Choosing Disaster Recovery

Our colleagues at FireEye have made a few predictions about what to expect for cybercrime in the next year:

• Increased infrastructure breaches
• More ransomware
• Many, many more phishing attacks

It sounds bad, but there’s no need to worry as long as you’re prepared with a rock-solid disaster recovery solution.

So, let’s talk about what you should look for when you start assessing your options.

Warning: Modern Disaster Recovery Solutions Require Complex Decisions

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but these days it’s a lot harder to choose a disaster recovery solution than it used to be. You have a lot of options for how and where you store your data, and you have your choice of qualified professionals who can handle your restoration process. Yet, it really is possible to find the exact right fit for your business. You just have your work cut out for you to find it.

Luckily though, all your hard work choosing the right solution will pay off, if, and more importantly, when you face a disaster. By taking the time to choose the right solution and provider, you’ll have the ability to achieve a full data restore in minutes, instead of days. No more late nights spent reinstalling applications, reconfiguring networks, or reallocating permissions. Phew!

But it all starts with finding the right provider and solution for your needs, so let’s get to it.

Look for a Provider that Meets Your Specific Needs

Your company has unique needs and requirements, they’re different needs than another company in your industry. Therefore, instead of presumptuously giving you a “one size fits all” list, we prefer to help guide you toward a more personalized solution that will be the right fit for your company.

Determine Which Features You Require

You’re going to need to determine a general idea of what features you will require. To start, contact a disaster recovery expert to get additional advice tailored to your exact needs.

To figure these out, ask yourself the following questions:

• How fast do you need to restore your systems?

If your business completes transactions every second, waiting even a few minutes for a restore could harm revenue. However, it’s all about balance. If your business isn’t changing from minute to minute, you can reduce your costs by choosing a reliable backup appliance instead. It can restore your systems in as little as five minutes.

• What are your compliance needs?

Disaster recovery experts each specialize in a few areas. If you have HIPAA or GLBA compliance requirements, you’ll want to make sure your MSP understands the complexities of your situation and can protect your data to keep you compliant.

• Are you able to use cloud backup?

Secondary cloud-based backups are the modern choice for convenience and affordability, but you must be careful which cloud service you choose. Before you select a cloud backup service, you’ll want to find out where your data will be stored, who will have access, and what kinds of security clearance and background checks are required for the people handling it.

• What level of service do you need?

You already know the importance (and variability) of service-level agreements, so we don’t need to remind you to read the fine print. You’ll need to make sure your company’s data is fully protected, and that your provider guarantees they will respond immediately when you need them.

• Does your team know how to respond to an emergency?

Setting up IT processes and solutions for disaster recovery is only half of the recovery process. You also need a business continuity plan that helps people in your company (including you) deal with a disaster, because any time you lose your data, you are probably in the midst of a nerve racking, high-stress situation. The right MSP will not only help you create a disaster recovery plan, they will also teach your team how to execute it properly so that everyone at your company is prepared at all times.

It’s Important to Choose the Right Disaster Recovery Solution Provider

As an IT pro yourself, you already know there is a wide gap between the things you “mostly” understand and the things you master. If you’re lucky enough to work with an IT team, your coworkers also have their strengths (and weaknesses.) It only stands to reason that all disaster recovery services providers out there also have their own strengths and weaknesses.

You want to make sure you choose the right provider with the right expertise for your company, so you can rest easy and know that everything is covered in the event of an emergency.

Work with the Disaster Recovery Experts

For more than 30 years, Bit by Bit has helped companies of all sizes protect their systems, networks, and data with state-of-the-art disaster recovery solutions that can restore client businesses back to normal operations, often within minutes of an unexpected event.

We are happy to assess your current business continuity plan and see where we can improve upon it. We’ve effectively handled a lot of disasters and we can advise you on determining the right disaster recovery solutions for your needs.

Start the conversation when you contact Bit by Bit online.