Businesses need disaster recovery plan
Aug. 20—SHELBY COUNTY — The Sidney-Shelby County Chamber of Commerce hosted a cybersecurity forum featuring speakers who offered advice for businesses in the area.
Jonathan Sparks with Expedient Technology Solutions shared that in 2018, Small Business Indicators reported that 68% of small business do not have a written disaster recovery plan even though roughly that same number will experience data loss at some point. He explains, "Technology can fail. We're all human and mistakes happen. Mother nature has her own plans for us. The last thing is cybersecurity threats are on the rise. In 2019, 58% of cyber crimes targeted small businesses and world wide predicted losses are set to exceed $10.5 trillion by 2025."
Sparks recommended that businesses use the 3-2-1-1-0 rule. The rule is that you have 3 different types of data: one production and two backup, on 2 different types of media with 1 offsite backup, 1 offline or immutable — when data is written, it cannot be changed, with 0 errors after back up data verification.
One of the more important facets of a disaster recovery plan is to test the backups on a regular basis. Testing will find holes in the plan. A true disaster recovery plan should be written in a manner that anyone could implement the plan. In a true disaster situation, you will not know who is running things and what technical knowledge they will have and how they are reacting to the situation emotionally.
At a minimum a disaster recovery plan should be updated once a year but the plan should be a living document. The disaster recovery plan should be changed continually to match the changes in the business.
Reach Dean Brown at 567-242-0409
