Most companies take measures to protect their IT data, and with good reason. However, the increasingly critical role of IT in business models tends to increase the vulnerability of enterprises to disasters.

To help you evaluate your company’s risk level in event of a disaster, we have drawn up a questionnaire that addresses four areas related to IT security. This short survey will help you have a better idea of the consequences of a disaster on your operations, business, human resources, and your supply chain.

Answer the following questions and determine your risk level!

These days, no company is safe from IT disasters. The causes are as many as they are varied. What with the damage of equipment, natural disasters, outside provider service interruption, human errors, and computer abuse, it becomes rapidly clear that the concept of “risk free” does not exist.

Knowing that computer disasters lead to revenue losses of billions of dollars annually on a global level, it is in enterprises' best interest to understand the risks and adopt preventive and proactive solutions.

>>>Learn how you can protect your business assets with our free ebook<<<

The main reason for our blog is to share insightful news and views on technology with our clients.  But occasionally, we permit ourselves to toot our own horn.  So, we’d like to take this opportunity to share with our readers 3 updates we’re proud to have accomplished.

Ransomware is a category of malware whose purpose is to render the targeted data unusable or to block access to IT systems until a ransom is paid, generally in the form of hard to trace virtual money.

It can just as easily encrypt data from a work station as it can with what it has access to on a shared network.

A considerable threat

The 2016 Midyear Security Roundup: The Reign of Ransomware study demonstrates that throughout the first half of 2016 there was a 172% increase in cases of ransomware, in comparison to all of 2015.

A recent survey of thousands of companies worldwide, to develop a detailed picture of the situation in terms of data protection was concluded and raised disturbing findings.

In Canada, 66 % of companies say they have little confidence in their disaster recovery capabilities. It is a well-founded fear, because the data protection investment usually does not follow the constant evolution of storage solutions.

If we consider that in 2014, in Canada, the average cost of disaster recovery was $ 1.8 million, it is essential to consolidate protection and business objectives, to avoid such a catastrophic situation.

Last month, we hosted a special conference about disaster recovery, featuring George Crump, founder of Storage Switzerland and Éric Poulin from EMC.

George’s Texas-based company is all about data protection and recovery solutions using the latest IT technologies. George leads a hands-on analytical approach, using all of his many years of experience working in data centers, on the front line of data protection and disaster recovery. His goal is to prepare companies for worst case scenarios which unfortunately tend to happen more often than what business owners think.

In his words, backup and recovery is a process. Too often the technology is blamed when things go wrong, where actually the failure is in the proper use of this technology.

In this article, we share George’s take on the major problems of disaster recovery plan and how to resolve them following the 3 R’s.

High availability systems have many advantages for companies that handle a large volume of data and multiple applications.

First of all, this type of system protects against significant financial losses when an unexpected event makes sensitive data inaccessible. It also helps to better manage outages, resume operations quickly after a failure, and significantly reduces the downtime of IT systems during backups.

In this leading edge field, the IBM system i - also known under the names AS/400 and IBM Power – has been a reference for almost 30 years. As part of a high- availability environment, the Quick-EDD/HA solution by Traders is recommended for an operation that ensures the quick uptime of systems and data availability.

When we talk about an IT disaster recovery plan, it is obvious that the responsibility for implementing one lies with IT managers. However, senior management must understand the implications of the absence of such a plan to be able to make the right decisions.

Despite frequent discussions between senior management and IT managers,  it often still happens that the stakes and repercussions for the company are not fully understood.

We talk every week with clients who face crisis situations because of this misunderstanding. A recent example we saw was that of a company that had underinvested in its IT infrastructure for several years as senior management believed that all the best practices were in place to both maintain the availability of its environment and ensure recovery in case of disaster.  When in reality, the infrastructure presented major risks that were identified by doing due diligence.