How Much Could A Data Loss Cost Your Business?

Data loss emergencies can hit any business without any prior indication of a potential problem. Sometimes data loss issues can be nothing more than a business hiccup and not to much data is lost, or the lost data can quickly be reworked  to get the situation back to normal. Conversely though large data loss scenarios can have an devastating effect on a business and the more employees they have or the more reliant they are on their IT infrastructure, then the bigger the problem.

If a main raid server has gone down and this is used to house the company’s customer relationship management software then quite literally business can stop , especially if the CRM system is principally used for sales or the company employs a large sales force.

The effect of a data loss will affect companies in different degrees so a larger corporation may suffer from a great cost due to the loss but a smaller company may struggle to survive the effects or may simply not have the cash flow in place to cope with a potentially very expensive recovery.

With the ever increasing reliance on IT most business owners will have started to become reasonably educated about the need for a disaster recovery plan for their business, and plans may have already been put in place but this does not make the system infallible as if the plan has note yet been tested, or has not been implemented which often happens if a business waits for suitable window if a server needs upgrading for example, then the company will still be open to risk.

The net effect of a data loss emergency can simply cost thousands and for large corporations tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands. The actual cost will course depend on the type of business involved and costs can be both tangible or intangible for example: the cost of lost sales can be easily measured by comparing a previous days trading.

This can be a useful yard stick to justify the return of investment in a business continuity plan so for example if a business was clearing only 2k in sales per hour then a days downtime could result in a gross loss of 16k in sales alone.

Cost of lost sales is only one of the aspects that can be measured but other costs need to be taken into consideration as well many of which can be swept under the table if not factored. These could include the actual cost of employing a data recovery company in the first place or even punitive fines for missing contractual deadlines depending on what industry your business is in.

As well as measurable costs a company also need to factor intangibles into any return on investment or risk reduction calculation. Typical factors here could include activities such as re-population of customer CRM systems, additional management costs and business costs of running temporary as opposed to automated IT systems etc.

Another critical factor that should never be overlooked in the event of a data emergency is the restoration of the data. In many cases data can be irrevocably lost due to bungled attempts at recovery by inexperienced IT technicians.

Also if you are employing the services of one of the  data recovery companies you need to check their potential methodology and ensure they will not work on the actual donor disks as it is crucial to keep the main data source intact at all times.

Specialist disaster recovery and raid recovery experts will use state of the art equipment is to recover lost data from raid servers, laptops and other storage media or network attached storage devices, and to make sure you data is safe just in case a data loss strikes again they should also supply remote server backup solutions for small and corporate businesses to ensure business continuity.

For memory stick recovery help visit the IT support Manchester website.