When a disaster strikes, businesses can become disconnected from their critical data stores, preventing them from continuing operations. Whether it be weather-related, the result of a malware attack or simply human error, when storage devices become damaged or corrupted, business continuity becomes threatened. For large enterprises, IT managers have typically employed redundancies to ensure that operations can continue unabated or with minimal disturbance, but small businesses do not have the resources or manpower to implement such a project. Without robust data archiving solutions in place, these organizations may be unable to conduct business after such an event.

PhillyBurbs.com contributor Stewart Paul recently urged small business owners to deploy a strong data backup system in the event that disaster strikes. He noted that many of these organizations do not have a recovery plan in place, putting their future in jeopardy. Financial records, client contact information and transaction accounts can all be stored on a single device. If a sudden voltage spike, penetrating malware attack or hardware degeneration were to occur, that information could be lost forever.

Employing a data archiving solution can provide businesses with protection in the event that disaster strikes and their primary storage devices are rendered inoperable.

“Developing a disaster recovery plan is the first important step to ensure organizational continuity,” Paul stated. “Backing up your informational assets is a key responsibility today.”

Taking control of data archiving
In a small business environment, individual employees shoulder a lot of the daily workload. However, owners cannot rely on them to carry out an effective archiving and recovery plan, according to enterprise IT expert and InformationWeek contributor Wendy Schuchart. One of the reasons why employees may overlook the need for a solid archiving plan is because they do not properly appreciate the potential for data loss to occur as well as the fallout that could follow. For instance, workers may not be aware that disaster recovery extends to phenomena unrelated to weather events such as malware attacks and hardware failure.

Another concern is that employees might have already unilaterally offloaded whatever they deem to be important into a third-party storage service such as Dropbox. This possibility highlights the need for business owners to take control of their data and implement their own data archiving solutions. Having an off-site backup option in case primary systems are damaged or corrupted can ensure that operations can get up and running again in no time. For additional security, businesses can utilize a disc-based solution such as a Blu-ray burner. This way, organizational leaders can scale their data archiving solutions up or down as they please, copying files onto portable Blu-ray discs that can be easily recovered if primary storage devices go down.