Coping with Data Loss Emergencies

Data loss emergencies can hit any business without any prior indication of a potential problem. Sometimes data loss issues can be nothing more than a business hiccup and not to much data is lost, or the lost data can quickly be reworked to get the situation back to normal. Conversely though large data loss scenarios can have an devastating effect on a business and the more employees they have or the more reliant they are on their IT infrastructure, then the bigger the problem.

If a main raid server has gone down and this is used to house the company’s customer relationship management software then quite literally business can stop , especially if the CRM system is principally used for sales or the company employs a large sales force.

The effect of a data loss will affect companies in different degrees so a larger corporation may suffer from a great cost due to the loss but a smaller company may struggle to survive the effects or may simply not have the cash flow in place to cope with a potentially very expensive recovery.

If the business has had the forethought to put a disaster recovery plan in place then this can be quickly be implemented to get your business into action but if you do not have one, or have completed you business continuity plan but have simply not implemented yet then the effect of the data loss can be quite far reaching.

The net effect of a data loss emergency can simply cost thousands and for large corporations tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands. The actual cost will course depend on the type of business involved and costs can be both tangible or intangible for example: the cost of lost sales can be easily measured by comparing a previous days trading.

This can be a useful yard stick to justify the return of investment in a business continuity plan so for example if a business was clearing only 2k in sales per hour then a days downtime could result in a gross loss of 16k in sales alone.

Cost of lost sales is only one of the aspects that can be measured but other costs need to be taken into consideration as well many of which can be swept under the table if not factored. These could include the actual cost of employing a data recovery company in the first place or even punitive fines for missing contractual deadlines depending on what industry your business is in.

As well as measurable costs a company also need to factor intangibles into any return on investment or risk reduction calculation. Typical factors here could include activities such as re-population of customer CRM systems, additional management costs and business costs of running temporary as opposed to automated IT systems etc.

Another crucial factor that needs to be taken into account during any data emergency is the sheer value of your company data, it is often extremely tempting to follow the path of least resistance and least cost by asking you IT department to try and rectify the situation, unfortunately history has shown that the chances of corrupting data even further are very high unless your IT department employs a data or raid recovery specialist.

Also if you are employing the services of a raid Data recovery specialist you need to check their potential methodology and ensure they will not work on the actual donor disks as it is crucial to keep the main data source intact at all times.

Specialist disaster recovery and raid recovery experts will use state of the art equipment is to recover lost data from raid servers, laptops and other storage media or network attached storage devices, and to make sure you data is safe just in case a data loss strikes again they should also supply remote server backup solutions for small and corporate businesses to ensure business continuity.

For data recovery help visit the data recovery Manchester website.