The last few years have seen a lot of homes and businesses destroyed due to various disasters such as hurricanes, fire, power outages and cyber attacks.
Businesses have finally agreed that disasters are no longer a rarity and they are now acknowledging the increase in their frequency. This means disaster recovery solutions can no longer be seen by businesses as yet another expenditure and should be considered as a necessary investment for the future and survival of the company.
The most basic mistake enterprises make is in viewing disaster recovery solutions as an IT expenditure. Enterprises need to understand that disaster recovery’s primary purpose is the continuity of the business in the face of catastrophe.
Another misconception IT professionals have had for a while is that they feel they do not need a disaster recovery solution if they have already invested in a cloud backup service.
While a cloud backup service is obviously a necessity, it is absolutely wrong to consider it a replacement for a disaster recovery service. The disaster recovery process is crucial to business continuity planning. In fact, disaster recovery IS business continuity planning.
When it comes to selecting from the types disaster recovery solutions, i.e on-premise only versus cloud-based, cloud-based clearly wins the vote of confidence.
What IT professionals now think
According to a survey of 403 IT professionals by Zetta, 74 percent of IT professionals have confidence in their on-premise disaster recovery solution, whereas, in comparison, 90 percent of IT professionals are confident about cloud-based disaster recovery.
Here are some of the highlights from the report:
- 96 percent reported they have a disaster recovery solution
- 9 percent are using a cloud-only disaster recovery solution
- 41 percent are using cloud and on-premise solutions
- 46 percent have an on-premise or physical based disaster recovery solution
- 4 percent have not deployed any type of disaster recovery solution
- 1 in 3 IT professionals are looking to update their disaster recovery solution in the next 12 months
Other noteworthy details from the report include the most common causes of IT downtime
- Power outage accounts for 75 percent
- Hardware error accounts for 52 percent
- Human Error accounts for 35 percent
- Virus/Malware Attack accounts for 34 percent
- Natural Disaster accounts for 20 percent
- Onsite Disaster accounts for 11 percent
- Data corruption accounts for 26 percent
- Expected updates and patches accounts for 20 percent
- Unexpected updates and patches accounts for 24 percent
Further, Mike Grossman, CEO of Zetta says, “While many think of disaster recovery as preparing for catastrophic natural events, most IT downtime can be caused by simple power outages, hardware, and human errors, and increasingly, security vulnerabilities,”.
Impact of Disasters in 2016
Swiss Re released a report highlighting the losses the world suffered in 2016 due to disasters.
According to their report, total losses from disaster events have risen to USD$158 billion in 2016. Below are some more highlights from their report.
- Total economic losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters are estimated to be USD $158 billion. This is significantly higher than the USD $94 billion losses in 2015
- Insured losses from disaster events were around USD $49 billion
- Approximately 10000 people lost their lives in disaster events in 2016
While the report may not segregate or specifically name the list of businesses suffering losses, it is fair to assume that many businesses must have been obviously affected. This report also highlights the frequency of these types of disasters, and the devastation they are capable of causing.
However, it is a positive sign that IT professionals are finally able to see the potential in cloud-based disaster recovery and are confident about it.
Author: CloudSecureTech
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