It’s Snow Joke; Protecting your business from Acts of

God, Mother Nature and IT Failure

Disaster happens

Would you know

where to start in any

of these situations?

What are your competitors doing?

And it’s not just Mother Nature…

• Cyber attacks/hacking - Every minute, of every hour, of ever day, a major financial institution is under attack – Telegraph, 2013

• Security attacks/breaches – can be physical or virtual

• Viruses – ‘viruses are becoming much more targeted and clever’ - John Pescatore, Director of SANS

• IT/system failure – one in five businesses will suffer from some form of IT/system failure

• Terrorism – the number of people arrested for suspected terror-related offences in England, Scotland and Wales rose last year – Metropolitan Police

• Theft - from 2012 onwards the number of people prepared to take the risks to steal cable has increased by 50% - British Transport Police

• Fire –uncontrollable, unpredictable can happen to anyone at any time

• Building collapse - late payments in the construction industry are causing cash-starved sub-contractors to cut corners when building offices – Real Business

• IT glitches – some industries simply can not afford to suffer from a ‘glitch’ including airlines and healthcare

• Disease/illness – what would you do if your staff couldn’t get into work?

• Strikes – can be a mass staff walk out for you, or can stop your staff from doing their jobs i.e. tube strikes

• Disruptive events – i.e. the Olympics, big national events can wreak havoc on businesses and even network usage

"Despite the number of very public disasters since 9/11 and 7/7, still only about 50% of companies report having a disaster recovery plan. Of those that do, nearly half have never tested their plan, which is tantamount to not having one at all."

Rise of the 24 hour nation

• We now rely on technology and IT more than ever, this reliance will only increase

• Mobile technology and wireless ways of working means we now operate 24 hours a day with businesses needing to maintain an ‘always-on presence’

• Modern customers want information and service as and when they want it, they are not prepared to wait

• Technology has and continues to advance, DR is not the same as it was 10 years ago – it had to adapt to a nation that is constantly switched on

Disaster recovery is now more important than ever and will only increase in importance the more we rely on technology systems and automation to run our businesses

So, what is DR?

Working to minimise the effects of a disaster to ensure your organisation will be able to maintain, or quickly resume, mission-critical IT functions. Including providing access to company data, applications and ensuring calls are still answered.

DR is NOT the same as Business Continuity

• Business continuity is proactive – keeping systems and overall business operations working whatever the weather

• Disaster recovery is reactive – these are the steps you take to resume business after a disruptive event

• Both signify a need for the RIGHT tech and comms solutions to minimise most threats to your business

Plan, review and implementDR strategies need to encompass continuation through any fatality, we

look to the core tech on every site including:

• NGNs

• Lines/SIP

• Systems

• Connectivity

• Mobile

Of the 50% of businesses that do

have a DR plan in place, almost half

admit to not knowing how to execute it

in the event of disaster – or even

where to start

DR on top of DR on top of DR…

• The Cloud/virtual DR – guaranteed

resolution time faster than traditional

solutions

• Offshore DR – back up and then back

up again!

October 2013Already we have seen two disastrous events with poor planning and costly consequences

• One of the UK’s largest health organisations was out of action for nearly 48 hours after an ‘IT glitch’

• Lives were put at risk as 7,000 patients were unable to seek treatment

• 48 hours recovery time is simply not acceptable in the modern age, which shows a lack of a clear DR procedure

• One of the UK’s largest retailers suffered problems with their MPLS network causing them to close the store for one day. They were unable to open tills or take card payments

• The retailer reported a loss of £1m from less than 24 hours

• Auto-failover does exist for card payments and can be switched to another network should the primary network fail

• Shows clear lack of procedure

Whether small or large, disasters can be as simple as staff not being able to get into work or as large as a building fire. Any will have cost implications to your company. What is your strategy?

Get rid of the ‘it won’t happen to me attitude’

The disruption of snow and floods at its worst peak last year led to employers losing an estimated £318million (Green Flag Breakdown).

In total, 8.5 million UK residents were unable to make it through their traditional working hours, causing 51.4 million lost working hours in the last seven days. A further 19% of staff claimed they were too scared to take to the road during the icy weather.

Four out of five of the wettest years

on record have occurred since the

millennium. This trend of extreme

rainfall will continue into the next

decade. (The Met Office)

Ask yourself: Are you ready?

Four out of five of the wettest years on

record have occurred since the

millennium. This trend of extreme

rainfall will continue into the next

decade. (The Met Office)

Worried? • We will offer you sound advice on DR planning as well as advising on, reviewing and helping

you test any existing DR plans you may have

• Contact us now and tell us what systems you use and how much data you have and we can calculate your risk and loss

•We currently keep more than 3,000 UK businesses connected 24 hours a day•We provide disaster recovery with EVERY solution whilst reducing costs and increasing productivity – ‘growth by communications’ •We are the only unified communications provider to be ranked four times by the Sunday Times Tech Track, recognising the UK’s fastest growing technology companies

Thanks for watching

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