Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 28 | Page 44

FEATURE: DISASTER RECOVERY ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Disaster Recovery is more vital than ever. The loss of data has more serious consequences than ever before not only because of the loss of vitally important information but also because of the cost of reputational damage that can have a major impact on business. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that an effective Disaster Recovery system is absolutely crucial to the success of a business. I magine the ultimate IT disaster. A business loses its critical data following a natural or human-induced catastrophe. Loss of data can be caused by natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes. But there are also man-made disasters to take into account such as hazardous material spills, infrastructure failure, bio-terrorism and disastrous IT bugs. While it is not possible to prevent the likes of these, you can plan for such eventualities. There is no doubt that if such situations are handled badly a company can suffer serious reputational damage, which will do some sizable harm to the bottom line. In the worst cases, businesses can be put in a situation from which they can never truly recover. Fortunately, in recent years huge strides have been made in effective cloud-based Disaster Recovery systems. Intelligent CIO spoke to Nick Saunders, a cyber-resilience expert at Mimecast, to discuss the impact of a disaster and the best way to avoid one. If disaster strikes and a company loses its data, what impact can this have on it? In today’s information-driven world, data has become central to the running of any business. How we store and protect this data should be a top priority for any organisation. Data loss due to malicious or inadvertent leaks can be a serious problem for organisations today. Whether it’s intellectual property, customer data or sensitive financial information, data loss can have negative impacts on customer relationships, business competitiveness, corporate reputation and your bottom line. And as the threat landscape evolves, data loss is becoming more and more likely, with threats such as ransomware, impersonation, and malicious files or URLs becoming a common occurrence. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be coming into Making data protection a top priority 44 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com