Even the slightest business interruption can be costly

Business interruptions can vary in magnitude from natural disasters impacting an entire region to common, everyday data loss circumstances due to software or hardware failures, or temporary power failures. Having a disaster recovery plan can help you better prepare for and respond to a wide range of business interruption events. We’ve highlighted a few tips for making sure your business can quickly recover from a catastrophic event.

Establishing backup frequency, rotation and storage

The importance of backing up your digital information can’t be stressed enough. Many organizations don’t back up critical files often enough. Most data recovery experts recommend a combination of full, differential, and incremental backups for ensuring maximum recovery times, although your backup schedule will be determined by the following:

• the type of data
• how critical the data is
• how often it changes

Once a backup schedule is determined, it’s equally important that tapes are properly rotated and stored offsite in a dedicated media vault facility offering systems for protecting your data from theft, unauthorized access, and a range of natural disasters. A professional data protection solution offers the following:

• media rotation services
• real-time tracking of media assets
• data recovery support
• emergency hot-site delivery

Safeguarding business documents

Disaster recovery planning includes protecting the entirety of your corporate information, so it extends to properly safeguarding your paper records as well. Unfortunately, it’s common for companies to keep a mix of archival, active and vital hardcopy business documents onsite. This is a risky practice for several reasons.
First, files can easily go missing in an active working environment, which happens easily if a thorough inventory index of your records is not kept. Documents retrieved without proper administrative oversight may become inadvertently misplaced or deliberately stolen. Second, poor storage conditions—excessive humidity, dust, and heat—can gradually compromise the integrity of paper records. Third, and perhaps most importantly, paper records can become permanently lost in the event of a disaster.

A professional records management solution can strengthen the ability to protect your paper records in support of your company’s disaster recovery capabilities. Archival documents and vital records should be stored offsite in a records storage facility that ensures long-term preservation and security. A commercial record centre offers the following benefits:

• video surveillance
• fire detection and protection
• access control technology
• climate control
• alarm monitoring

All information stored within a commercial record centre should be barcoded and tracked using an inventory management database. You should also be able to retrieve documents through a web-based interface to support both routine retrievals and disaster recovery protocol.

Docu-Dépôt provides records and information management solutions to businesses throughout Montréal and Québec. To find out more, please contact us by phone or complete the form on this page.