Disaster Recovery, by contrast, refers to a plan and process to rapidly restore access to applications, data, and IT resources following a disruption.
Disaster recovery planning is a subset of the larger process known as enterprise continuity planning, and includes plans to restore applications, data, equipment, electronic communications (such as networks), and other IT infrastructure.
When the company’s infrastructure is damaged or data is lost, it requires an entire catastrophe recovery effort to resume operations without critical interruptions for the business.
A disaster recovery solution will ensure you can quickly restore data and services so that employees can return to work before the operations of the company are completely shut down.
In various scenarios, your data recovery plan should incorporate as much automation as possible, so you can quickly put things back in place. In some cases, keeping some of your backups or disaster recovery processes on-premises may help you extract data and restore services quickly. While backing up critical data through an application such as Office 365 backup, is a component of every company IT strategy, having backups is different from having a disaster recovery plan.
Instead, with a proper backup and disaster recovery plan, you can protect data to the cloud, where you can pull out the non-infected versions of data taken, and restore them on a new device, or on an older, cleaner one. Data is stored on a cloud, and it can also be recovered on a cloud. The cloud backup process copies data, and then stores it in another media or a separate storage system, which allows for easier access if there is a restore situation.
Typical cloud backup solutions, also known as online backup, are focused on copies of data files in physically distant locations, which is ideal for disaster recovery. Cloud or dedicated servers are excellent options for off-site data backup, and they can assist with business operations should a disaster occur.
Losing data can be stressful, but if you take preventative measures and are prepared for these events, recovering data can be relatively easy.
By planning and preparing in advance for the possibility of data loss, you can take swift action without sacrificing a significant budget to the recovery process, and with little lost productivity. Your goal should be to recover from the disaster as quickly and smoothly as possible.
With a plan, you can limit the length of time that your company is affected by data loss, or another type of disaster, and thus, you can limit the extent of damage.
You might have a particular strategy to back up your data, but responding to disaster means being prepared to deal with a worst-case scenario. You must establish a routine, ongoing data backup and recovery plan that will safeguard your company and your data against unexpected losses.
Local storage also allows you to replicate or back up your data more frequently, improving the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) — meaning that you can restore data from nearly any time. A data backup service is critical for helping you achieve RPO requirements (as long as the data backups happen at intervals that match or exceed your RPO times), but you will also need tools and processes for quickly retrieving your data.
While it is of course critical to avoid losing any data in the first place, having a strong, reliable DR plan is critical for continuing business operations when a business-critical data loss or other disruption occurs unavoidably.
Whether an accidental deleted file or catastrophic loss of critical information, recovering data, both quickly and accurately, is essential for getting back up and running as soon as possible.
A software provider may help you resolve performance issues that you might experience with the app that you are using, but most of the time, a provider will not ensure fast data recovery or service restores, which are necessary for maintaining business continuity if there is unexpected problem.
