Business continuity is often discussed in regard to enterprise-level organizations, but its concepts are applicable to small businesses as well. If anything, smaller operations should be more concerned about keeping their key services and applications up and running, as they lack the resources to weather extended periods of downtime. Even the most loyal customer will seek out the services of a competitor if his or her preferred provider is unable to continue operating. One of the most important aspects of a business continuity plan is having data archiving solutions in place to ensure that owners have access to their critical data in the event of a crisis.

The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety recently explained that random, unpredictable events such as lightning strikes can cause extensive damage to the infrastructure of a small business. Even without receiving a direct hit, an organization could suffer a massive voltage spike that can overload critical equipment and irrecoverably harm on-site data storage devices. Small businesses rely on numerous sources of information to keep their organizations running, including sales and transaction data, payroll records and customer index files.

“No matter its size, every business is vulnerable to a disaster,” the organization stated. “Having a recovery plan in place can make the difference between reopening in a matter of weeks, months, or – worse – be among the one out of four that never reopen following a disaster.”

Maintaining an off-site data archiving solution
The organization outlined several steps for protecting data in the event of a crisis, chief among them backing up important records and files with data archiving solutions. Businesses should also be sure to keep hard copies of this data in a safe, off-site location. This way, business owners can quickly retrieve any lost data without losing a significant amount of revenue to operational downtime.

Tech Reviews stated that there are numerous ways data can be lost or compromised, including power fluctuations, network breaches and employee error. Many businesses leverage external data storage devices to back up their primary equipment, providing a safety net in case such an incident occurs. One of the best methods of ensuring that critical files are available after a damaging data loss incident is to use disc-based archiving solutions. Because information is stored on cost-effective discs, business owners can scale their archiving solutions up or down as they please. A Blu-ray burner, for instance, can facilitate the development of an extensive data archiving initiative, allowing organizations to spread their backed-up data across a series of high-capacity discs for easy retrieval. This way, small business owners will continue to have access to critical information following a data loss incident.