Oops, laptop broken!

The Importance of Being Prepared for IT Disasters: Prevention and Recovery

Imagine this scenario: You accidentally spill a glass of water over your main computer and it becomes non-functional.

What would be the financial impact on your business: That day? That week? That month?

Do you have a plan in place for such an incident?
How quickly could you get a new computer up and running?
How would you access your data?
How long would it be before you could resume your normal operations?

These questions highlight the critical need for a comprehensive IT disaster preparedness plan. While the computer itself may not be business-critical, the data stored on it is. Buying a new computer won’t help if the data is lost. However, with the right precautions, you can minimise disruption and continue as though nothing happened.

The Need for a Clear Plan

Having a clear plan in place for IT disasters can make the difference between surviving an incident unscathed or having to close your business. Cloud storage can ensure data accessibility after physical damage to a computer, but it isn’t always enough. Cloud storage itself can be corrupted or destroyed, leading to the loss of data that was believed to be secure.

To ensure business continuity, you need to be prepared before something happens and ready to take steps to recover afterwards. Prevention is better than cure, but for maximum safety, it’s important to be capable of both.

Protect-IT: Comprehensive Backup Solutions

Our Protect-IT package addresses these concerns by providing a variety of backup solutions to suit your needs:

• COVE Backup: Documents: Included with Protect-IT at no extra cost, COVE Documents backs up documents based on file type. This covers the most common files used by Microsoft 365, along with open-source alternatives.
• COVE Backup: Comprehensive: Backs up the entire workstation, allowing it to be restored to a previous state if the hardware is undamaged, or to fresh installation on a new computer.
• COVE Backup: M365: Backs up data related to Microsoft 365, such as SharePoint files, OneDrive, and emails. These files, often assumed to be backed up by being on the cloud, can still be lost to corruption, incidents, or attacks.

Understanding “The Boom”

In cybersecurity, we refer to “Left of Boom” and “Right of Boom.” Imagine a timeline going from left to right, with the “boom” in the centre representing the incident or attack that causes significant problems. This concept applies to both deliberate attacks and genuine accidents.

• Left of Boom: Covers anything before disaster strikes, including reducing the likelihood of an attack and putting measures in place to recover quickly.
• Right of Boom: Covers everything after disaster strikes, focusing on recovery and preventing future incidents.

Left of Boom: Prevention

Preventing attacks and disasters is crucial. Solidarity-IT focuses on reducing the danger of attacks with the following Protect-IT modules:

• Protect-IT: Patch Management: Closes possible avenues for cyberattacks before they can be exploited.
• Protect-IT: SentinelOne Endpoint Detection and Response: Protects from viruses and malware, constantly updating to detect suspicious activity.
• Protect-IT: Web Protection: Identifies threats online before they become a problem.
• Protect-IT: Risk Intelligence: Provides reports to better inform you of potential threats to your data.

We also offer other prevention services on a non-subscription basis:

• Service-IT: A one-hour audit of your computer to identify existing issues and prevent future problems. We recommend doing this quarterly.

Right of Boom: Recovery

While prevention is ideal, recovery remains an essential part of cybersecurity. Even with the best security measures, there’s always a risk of accidents, disasters, zero-day threats, or users falling for scams. Some recovery actions are set up during the prevention phase, such as reliable backups.

Our services that cover the Right of Boom include:

• Protect-IT: COVE Backups: Ensure that your precious data can be recovered after an attack or disaster occurs.
• Fix-IT: Hardware and software repairs when a computer fails.
• Recover-IT: Data recovery from failed hard drives.

Right of Boom also involves reviewing your IT to understand how the breach or incident happened and what can be done to prevent it in the future.

Conclusion

Being prepared for IT disasters is about having a plan both for recovery from incidents and preventing them from occurring. With a comprehensive approach that covers both Left of Boom and Right of Boom, you can ensure your business remains resilient in the face of potential IT disasters.

Our Protect-IT package offers the tools and solutions needed to safeguard your data and maintain business continuity, no matter what challenges arise.

Contact us today, as you never know when disaster could strike, and it is best to be prepared.