If your business is hit with an IT disaster, do you have the tools and planning to respond effectively? Or are you scrambling to find solutions?

If you want to survive a disaster, it's best to be prepared for anything, including an unplanned IT system shutdown (known as an "IT disaster"). IT disasters knock you offline, halting productivity and potentially erasing valuable data.

When IT systems fail, companies lose profits until systems come back online. If data backups aren't set up or fail, data vanishes, deleting hours, days, or even years of work and information.

So, what can organizations do to minimize downtime and protect data in a crisis?

Your company's internal IT department or external IT provider can help create an IT disaster and recovery system.

If you turn on your computer and all of your files are gone? What do you do? How does it affect your business?

If you are hit by ransomware, do you know how quickly you can be back online?

What do you need to return to productivity when vital IT applications or hardware go down?

These situations are examples of IT disasters, and they can halt productivity, damage your reputation, and accrue significant financial losses if they are not handled swiftly and effectively.

The cybercrime industry looms as a constant threat to businesses and individuals. Experts estimate that cybercrime costs will reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. Now, it's rarely a case of "if" you experience a cyberattack. Instead, it's a matter of "when.

If your server goes down, do you know how to get your systems running again?

What happens to your data if your facility is damaged or unreachable?

What do you do when your business productivity drops because your IT system is down?

IT disaster recovery answers questions like these, allowing you to respond to system failures and minimize downtime.

What happens if your business productivity comes to a grinding halt?

For every hour of downtime, your company loses money and, sometimes, its reputation.

How would you minimize the downtime to come back online? How could you prevent this from happening in the future?

Fortunately, there are ways to prevent downtime, lost revenue, and damaged reputations.

What would you do if you turned off your computer and all your files were gone? What would you do if none of the programs worked or had also vanished?

This is stressful on a personal computer, but what if this happened on your work laptop? Or for your office?

Would you have to start from scratch? Or would you have copies of the data saved and ready to reinstall?

Backup and recovery systems safely store data from a designated timeframe in case data is erased or compromised.

Summary
Data backups and IT continuity are often looked at as the same thing. There are differences that can have consequences for a business. Here's a look at the difference between backing a basic data backup and IT continuity.
Basic Data Backup Defined
Data backup means having a copy of a specific set of data from a specific point in time.