Much has been said about the need for data backups in everyday life. Whether it’s a priceless collection of family photographs or a foray into digital art that requires protection, services that safeguard important files are growing in popularity.
However, the figures for loss and theft of digital property remain alarmingly high. WebTribunal claims that 140,000 hard drives crash each week in the United States.
Disaster Recovery
For some tech owners, disaster recovery can be a straightforward affair. As many of us know, most tech issues can be solved by simply turning something off and on again.
Slightly more taxing issues may require something like a tech survival kit, a package of supplies that help restore life to lots of different devices. ExpressVPN provides useful advice on how to put these packs together.
They contain items arranged in four different categories: storage devices, phones, chargers, and tools. The idea behind a tech survival kit is that it can serve as a repository for essential documents, including insurance paperwork and passports, which should be scanned to a flash drive, and provide assistance when utilities are cut off.
Larger businesses tend to require a more complete recovery plan. Inevitably, there are tens of different ways to handle this but it usually falls to an IT manager to put something in place.
These preparations are rarely fool-proof, largely due to a lack of care or interest. Cloud services company Sherweb claims that the percentage of businesses making daily backups is just 10%.
This failure to frequently secure information might be considered irresponsible given how lucrative cybercrime can be for perpetrators. For instance, ransomware, a type of attack that shuts down computer infrastructure unless a fee is paid (usually in cryptocurrency), earned criminal groups US $20bn in 2021.
Such large figures can be difficult to comprehend but, if we consider the fact that the same activity stole a comparatively paltry US$5bn back in 2017, it’s clear that cybercrime is a growth industry.
Cybersecurity Ventures reports that the money taken by crooks has increased 57x since 2015. Mercifully, the web-based Cybercrime Magazine made the previous statistics a bit easier to understand by stating that there’s a ransomware attack every 11 seconds, compared to every 40 seconds in 2016.
Intrusions of this type disproportionately affect businesses, with essential services considered a tasty target. Back in 2017, the UK’s NHS was hit by a ransomware attack that crippled 1,278 facilities, from doctor’s offices to clinics.
The ransom wasn’t paid but costs are estimated to be in the region of £92m. The healthcare provider was briefly returned to the days of pen and paper.
A Recovery Plan
This brings us to the concept in the title, DRaaS or Disaster Recovery as a Service. Business owners will likely already be familiar with the similar SaaS (Software as a Service).
This kind of product is not accessed locally, i.e. it’s not installed on a computer by the company that purchases it. Instead, it’s delivered over the internet, helping to free up resources for other things.
DRaaS is much more of a new thing and so it might not be a familiar product to every small business owner. However, it’s considered one of the most effective ways to protect against a technology-based disaster.
Why? It’s outsourced to a third party, according to the TechTarget website, so the indifference of employees towards backups is no longer a factor.
Ideally, DRaaS companies will also be kept separate from business customers in the event of a cyberattack. This means that any attempts to deny service or delete files will cause only minimal damage, as data is backed up elsewhere.
Of course, there’s an element of trust involved in this relationship, and DRaaS providers aren’t immune from the attention of criminals, so a hands-off approach won’t be popular with every manager out there.
The sad truth is that a lack of preparation for disaster correlates with bankruptcy. Figures online vary but between 40% and 93% of companies that fail to implement a recovery plan do not survive for much longer afterward.
This marks emergency prep as a critical consideration for just about every organization out there, especially those that rely heavily on hardware like physical servers.
In summary, there are plenty of products at different scales to help secure data against those who might harm it. The only question is whether managers and CEOs have the willingness to use them.
