Do You Know These Disaster Recovery Terms?
When you consider that each week in the United States, 140,000 hard drives experience some type of failure leading to data loss, it’s imperative that businesses of all sizes, in all industries, have a disaster recovery plan.
Yet nearly 60% of small businesses still aren’t adequately prepared for data loss. Even scarier, nearly 60% of businesses that do suffer a data loss will shut down within 6 months if they don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place.
A data breach or loss can occur due to hackers, malware, viruses, employee negligence, hardware failure, or a natural disaster such as fire or flood. Setting up a disaster recovery plan doesn’t have to be a difficult process — simply possessing knowledge of the disaster recovery terms utilized by either an in-house team or outsourced experts can help you to both better prepare and act efficiently during the recovery process.
Familiarize yourself with the commonly used disaster recovery terms listed below. Armed with that knowledge, you can deal with an unfortunate disaster better than ever before.
Disaster Recovery Terms
Disaster Recovery Plan
Your plan for executing safety and security protocols in the event of any disaster. In addition, it covers the restoration of as many aspects of your business as possible to continue operations during and after a disaster.
Business Recovery Team
The team assigned to the recovery process, as well as conducting regular maintenance as needed.
Business Continuity
Planning for the recovery and maintenance of IT systems and data, as well as the complete business infrastructure, to ensure daily business operations can continue as smoothly as possible.
Related: 5 Things to Include in a BDR Plan
Hot Site
The physical location where you’ll keep backup copies of all your data, documents, system software and applications.
Remote Site
The remote site is a backup location separate from your organization’s main building. Data at a remote site is typically in another secure location and can be accessed as needed only by authorized individuals.
Secondary Site
A site in which you maintain duplicates of your systems. You can activate these in the event of a disaster (also known as the disaster recovery site). This also relates to Data Mirroring, which is the creation and backup of all data in real-time, often via cloud backups.
Critical Infrastructure
All the important assets your business needs in order to continue operating.
Mission Critical Systems or Applications
System software of applications that are essential to the daily operations of your business.
Application Recovery
Refers to the recovery and restoration of important business applications needed to perform daily business functions.
System Restore
The process of restoring your systems from backups or data mirroring.
Related: The Complete Guide to Data Backup for SMBs
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
The time in which your systems and other business functions must be restored in order to resume operations without suffering losses
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
The time in which your organization must recover it’s critical data in order to avoid losses
High Availability
Refers to the IT components of your business that can continue to function for a short period of time. That includes the time during a power outage or other type of disaster. For example, computers connected to battery backups or a network system connected to a generator.
Visual Edge IT
A professional managed IT services organization that writes really good content and does great work with disaster recovery and backup efforts for small businesses. Hey, that’s us!
You may, of course, still come across some disaster recovery terms that are unfamiliar. But with the knowledge above, you’ll be better able to discuss, plan for, and react to a disaster and ensure business continuity. And with safe and secure data backups, as well as a managed IT services team able to assist, you’ll be suitably prepared for any disaster.
