data backup

Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity

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If you’ve been tasked with writing disaster recovery and business continuity plans for your company, you may be confused. Are disaster recovery and business continuity the same thing? Can I write just one plan to cover both?

Although they seem similar, disaster recovery and business continuity are different. They play unique and important roles in a company’s contingency planning, so it’s important to write a separate plan for each.

However, the plans will be closely related, and likely written in conjunction with one another. The information gathered during the business continuity planning process helps to determine the details of the disaster recovery plan, and vice versa.

Disaster recovery plans and business continuity plans are designed to work together, and are often implemented at the same time following an outage or incident. But they cover fully different aspects of a business, as we’ll discuss in detail below.

Disaster recovery refers to the plan implemented by a company’s IT department to bring systems back online with minimal data loss following an outage. The outage can either result from a disaster or it can actually be the disaster. And the outage can be as minor as email, an online service or the phone system going offline, or the entire IT system going down.

Business continuity refers to the plan that establishes the process of continuing business operations following an outage or incident. This does not include IT systems, but refers to the departments IT supports, such as customer service, sales, HR or others. The business continuity plan will work to keep all parts of the business running when outages occur.

It’s important for all Minnesota businesses to have both IT disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Outages are common, and businesses should be prepared. At Vaultas, our experienced Minneapolis data solutions experts can help you plan for the worst.

Whether your data is in our data center, your data center or a national cloud provider’s environment, we can preconfigure a solution that keeps you operating right through any disaster or disruption to your business. Contact us for more information.

Crypto Viruses are on the Rise. Is Your Data Secure?

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The largest data threat of 2016 is ransomware, or crypto viruses. Companies need to ensure that they protect themselves and educate their employees about this threat. The Milwaukee BizTimes published an article this week saying, “At the end of March 2016, 93 percent of all phishing emails contained encryption ransomware, up from 56 percent in December and less than 10 percent every other month in 2015.”

Ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid. These attacks can be against individuals, but typically they are targeted at companies because the payoff can be higher. In their article, “Incidents of Ransomware on the Rise,” the FBI says that “Ransomware attacks are … becoming more sophisticated. Several years ago, ransomware was normally delivered through spam e-mails, but because e-mail systems got better at filtering out spam, cyber criminals turned to spear phishing e-mails targeting specific individuals.”

The phishing emails from cyber criminals can spoof law enforcement agencies, service providers, delivery companies, government agencies or they can even look like they’re from your operating system claiming that you need an update. The BizTimes recommends that employees get trained on best practices to avoid crypto viruses. Make sure that they only open attachments from known sources, be wary of .exe files, if their computer suddenly gets an increase in pop-up ads or seems overly sluggish then they should report it to their IT departments as soon as possible.

IBM says that internal attacks from either malicious insiders or inadvertent actors accounts for up to 60% of the corporate infections that they see. They also claim that in 2015, the top marketplaces to fall victim to ransomware attacks are:

  1. Healthcare
  2. Manufacturing
  3. Financial Services
  4. Government
  5. Transportation

If your company does get infected, the FBI should be informed immediately. Report it to your local FBI field office and report the incident to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. They do not recommend paying the ransom because paying it doesn’t guarantee that you will receive your data back. In some cases, you may get some but not all of it.

Keeping your data safe and having offsite backups is the most important security measure. The FBI recommends that you “Secure your backups. Make sure they aren’t connected to the computers and networks they are backing up.” Working with a secure data center that uses the latest in Internet security and malware scanning is a must. Vaultas can help guide you through this process, and keep your data safe. For more information on how they can help, contact Vaultas today.

photo credit: Hacker – Hacking – Lupe von Nullen und Einsen – Virus gefunden- Blau via photopin (license)