There are lots of myths floating around about disaster recovery and business continuity solutions, and if you’re not careful to get the facts, you might find yourself with permanent losses when a crisis occurs, even if you think you have a disaster recovery plan in place. To help you understand what’s fact and what’s fiction, our team of IT security experts has put together the top four disaster recovery myths that need debunking.

Myth 1: Your business isn’t located in a geographic location prone to natural disasters, so the likelihood that you’ll ever run into a business-critical disaster is very low.

Truth: While natural disasters can certainly cause catastrophic losses, the vast majority of significant downtime is caused by manmade disasters. This can include everything from accidental missteps by employees to intentional malware infections by cybercriminals.

Myth 2: Daily backups of data are sufficient.

Truth: Backups are certainly a good start and should be part of any comprehensive disaster recovery strategy, but alone they are not enough. In order to guarantee business continuity, your business needs the infrastructure in place to access and retrieve the lost data and support continued operations. Furthermore, while losing a single day of data may not seem like a big deal, you’d be amazed how much data a single business operation can accumulate in 24 hours, so more frequent backup or replication is often an important piece of any disaster recovery solution.

Myth 3: Using the cloud means you’re prepared for disaster.

Truth: The cloud certainly has its advantages and can be a part of your disaster recovery strategy, but it is not a standalone solution. Consider, for example, what happens if your cloud provider experiences a simultaneous outage. No one solution should ever be your only resource for business recovery.

Myth 4: Disaster recovery and business continuity plans are too expensive for a small or medium sized business. It’s a luxury, not a necessity.

Truth: The creation of a disaster recovery plan does come with some upfront cost, but this is definitely a case of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  In other words, it’s much less costly to pay for a plan (and if you’re lucky, never need it) than it is not to have a plan to recover data and get your business back up and running quickly when disaster strikes.

Do you have disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place?

If you’re reading this and considering yourself lucky that you’ve never experienced a significant outage or data loss, now’s the time to act. Our team specializes in IT support in St. Louis covering the disaster recovery and business continuity needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

We understand that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all plan and we’ll work with your business experts to create a plan that is tailormade to your specific requirements and ensures a smooth and rapid recovery if and when disaster crisis strikes. Contact ATB to learn more or to schedule a complimentary initial consultation today.

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