How to avoid the dangers of losing critical business data

Responses to the survey revealed that multiple IT initiatives are the norm at these organisations. While 42% of participants reported a single initiative, 47% reported two or more. Nearly 30% of the participants reported initiatives to migrate to disk-based backup from tape or other technologies.

The survey revealed strong agreement on DLM issues. Adequate defences against loss of information was the strongest business driver.

Participants were questioned about their short- and long-term expectations. In the short term, a majority of participants (82%) expected DLM to address such concerns as data protection, privacy, and security initiatives. Expectations regarding long-term significance were highest for data protection, privacy, and security (71%), followed by reduced costs (64%). Participants agreed with an investment model that addresses critical short-term needs but also reduces long-term costs arising from compromised or lost data.

Selection criteria and roadblocks

When selecting a DLM solution, most participants said they evaluate how it will work with their current hardware, software, and administrative resources before considering financial criteria such as price and ROI.

The survey found that the strongest business driver of DLM initiatives was defense against catastrophic loss of information: backup, business continuity, and recovery. Participants expected to gain efficiency and security for their operations quickly, whilst delivering cost savings in the long run.

How prepared are you?

While the Symantec survey found the need to protect against catastrophic loss of information clearly articulated as a priority, other research indicates that many organisations would face serious consequences if they had to implement their disaster recovery plans. These are the big boys – how prepared are you?

An independent study conducted late last year by UK-based Dynamic Markets Ltd. surveyed 1,259 IT professionals around the world who have responsibility for, and are involved in, the management of their company's disaster recovery plan in organisations with more than 500 employees.

When presented with a scenario where a natural disaster (eg, a flood, fire or hurricane) completely destroyed the company's primary data centre, more than 40% of the respondents had no idea how long it would take to achieve normal, or even skeleton, operations. Moreover, 92% acknowledged that their companies would face serious consequences if they had to implement disaster-recovery plans.

Surprisingly, the research revealed that only 44% of companies surveyed use data restoration or backup software for disaster recovery purposes. In addition, only 9% of organisations use data replication software, while just 5% use high-availability clustering software. That too is surprising, since both of these technologies are vital to retrieving the critical applications of a business operation in the event of a disaster.

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The importance of testing

Business leaders today face the challenge of keeping their enterprises up, running and growing regardless of conditions. More than ever, thorough planning to mitigate the impact of a planned or unplanned disruption is a must. This involves integrating disaster recovery plans and business continuity plans and committing to regular testing. The goal should be a plan that is consistent across the enterprise, and which mitigates the likelihood of an incident and its potential impact. This will enable an enterprise to:

• Identify and mitigate business and technology risk
• Protect its assets, brand, and reputation
• Minimise the impact of events on customers and supply chain
• Demonstrate effective governance to the media, markets, and stakeholders
• Meet insurance, legal, contractual, and regulatory requirements
• Optimise business and technology recovery time
• Reduce frequency, duration, and cost of IT downtime

While many IT organisations have a disaster recovery plan in place, a plan is just a document on a disk if it's never tested.

No data center is static – whether you are a large corporation or a one-man or one-woman band. As such, no disaster recovery plan can be static either. Frequent upgrades to the data center - including modifications to the infrastructure, upgrades to the software, and alterations to the storage, to name a few - bring new implications to even the most comprehensive disaster recovery plan.

It is vitally important to test your disaster recovery plan, it's also important to test frequently. Testing can have significant advantages. Companies that commit to regular disaster recovery testing get a better picture of the plan's effectiveness and have the ability to make changes to the plan before disaster strikes.

• DLM and disaster recovery are not a discretionary expense or merely a mandate for heavily regulated sectors such as financial services or telecoms.
• The ubiquity of electronic records and computers in day-to-day business operations make this approach mission critical.
• Even a temporary loss of access to electronic records could result in costly consequences to business.
• Don’t do your competitors a favour by letting your business fall by the wayside. Act today.