In today's fast-paced digital landscape, disaster recovery (DR) is not just a precaution but a necessity. Here, we explore three real-world disaster recovery scenarios, ransomware attacks, data center destruction, and data sabotage, and discuss how businesses can effectively respond to these crises.
Scenario 1: Ransomware Attack
When a midsize manufacturing company got hit with a ransomware attack, the IT Director had the unenviable task of breaking the news to the CEO. The firm's database had been compromised, and a well-organized group of hackers was demanding tens of thousands of dollars to release the data.
Manufacturing operations were heavily reliant on the company's IT systems. Inventory, production processes, customer orders, and shipments were all managed within a single, highly integrated system. Without its ERP system, the company was brought to a near standstill.
Even if the company paid the ransom, top executives weren't sure that would mean an end to their problems. Recent backups were also compromised, so the only options were to pay up or try to rebuild from an older copy of the company's database. It took two months to recover from the damage.
Scenario 2: Data Center Destruction
One of the worst-case scenarios that a modern business can face is a disaster that destroys part or all of its data center, including the servers and disks inside it.
While such a situation is rare, it can happen. It's not limited to large-scale disasters, either, such as an earthquake or hurricane. Localized events like electrical surges, burst pipes, or even rodent infestations can cause permanent data center damage.
The best way to prepare your business for recovery from this type of disaster is to ensure that you have offsite copies of your data. If your production data lives on-premise in one of your data centers, this would mean keeping backups of the data at another data center site or in the cloud. If your data is hosted in the cloud, you could back it up to local storage, another cloud, or a different region of the same cloud.
Scenario 3: Data Sabotage
A third type of data disaster that might befall your business is one in which someone, such as a disgruntled employee, deliberately sabotages data. The employee might insert inaccurate or bogus data into your databases, for example, to lower data quality and make the data unusable for your business. He or she might even insert malicious code into your data to spread malware to your systems.
The critical step in preparing for this type of disaster is to ensure that you have backup copies of your data that go back far enough in time to allow you to recover using a version of the data that you know to be safe. If the only copy of your data that you have available was taken a day ago, but the damage occurred three days ago, the backup won't necessarily help.
This is why it's a good idea, when possible, to have multiple backups of your data on hand, each taken at a different time increment. Instead of deleting the last data backup when you make a new one, keep older backups on hand so that you can use them for disaster recovery if necessary. If you make a backup daily, and keep seven backups on hand, then you know that you can restore data from as long as a week ago if newer backups contain damaged information.
There is a trade-off when using an older backup for disaster recovery, of course. Any data that was added or modified since the last good backup will be lost. In certain disaster recovery situations, however, this is a relatively small price to pay.
Keep in mind, too, that if you can identify which parts of your data were sabotaged, you can leave that data intact, and recover only the damaged data to minimize data loss.
Why You Need Robust Disaster Recovery
We've all heard about the crippling ransomware attacks on large companies. Yet most ransomware attacks never show up in the headlines. Many are aimed at small and midsize organizations, and they're increasing in frequency.
Ransomware isn't the only reason you need a robust disaster recovery strategy. Natural disasters, localized hazards, and acts of sabotage can also be devastating.
Experts estimate the average cost of downtime at around $9,000 per minute. According to cybersecurity company Malwarebytes, 1 in 5 businesses that experience cyber-attacks are compelled to completely cease operations until they can resolve the crisis. And those costs don't include the cost of recovering data that has been compromised or destroyed. Insurance carrier Hiscox estimates that the average cost of recovery is $200,000.
Additional Resources
For a deeper dive into building resilient IT strategies, check out our blog post: Disaster Recovery Planning: Building Resilient IT Strategies with MSP Expertise.
Conclusion
In the face of potential disaster, having a robust disaster recovery plan is essential for any business. Whether dealing with ransomware, data center destruction, or data sabotage, preparation and strategic planning can significantly minimize downtime and data loss. Reach out to IP Consulting, an IT MSP, for comprehensive Disaster Recovery solutions tailored to safeguard your business against such threats.