Canadian business behind the curve on disaster recovery, according to report

A recent report by mid-market B2B telecom company TeraGo Inc. (TSX:TGO) and market intelligence firm IDC Canada, called “What’s the Weakest Link in DR plans?”, spells out the state of Canadian enterprise IT readiness when it comes to disaster recovery.
The report found that 81% of Canadian businesses are not testing their disaster recovery plans to industry standards, the impact of which can spell disaster for a company’s bottom line in the event of an unexpected IT infrastructure failure.
Most IT departments are already stretched in terms of resources meeting day-to-day needs, without taking into account the unlikelier disaster scenarios that might strike, which when or if they do are capable of taking a business down.
Many IT managers also aren’t aware that it’s their responsibility to test their disaster relief capacity after the company’s initial system is set-up.
Because most businesses don’t know whether or not their disaster recovery systems even work, when they are eventually hit, it’s too late to do anything about it, which is like playing a Big Data version of Russian roulette with a company’s most valuable asset.
The stakes are high, seeing as 40% of businesses do not reopen after a disaster and another 25% fail within one year.
Data analytics firm Aberdeen Group estimates that downtime as a result of a loss of mission critical data due to IT infrastructure failure can cost as much as $686,250 per hour.
Unsurprisingly, most Canadian businesses are not prioritizing disaster recovery, exposing them to a high risk of financial loss in the event of something going wrong with their data security.
A disaster recovery plan requires setting goals tied to hours for your recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).
The global standard for IT disaster recovery, ISO/IEC 27031, states that, “Strategies should define the approaches to implement the required resilience so that the principles of incident prevention, detection, response, recovery and restoration are put in place.”
45% of businesses in the IDC/TeraGo survey admitted that they’re unable to identify everything that could potentially jeopardize their IT infrastructure and the data required to run their business.
As with most mission critical IT problems faced by businesses everywhere, there are managed solutions available, allowing them to outsource DR planning from beginning to end, including threat identification, strategy development, conducting regular tests, and overall crisis management.
Aside from disaster recovery solutions, TeraGo sells end-to-end IT solutions for enterprise, including Internet and voice access, as well as data centre and cloud services.
In 2014, TeraGo began implementation of a plan to transition from a network services provider to an end-to-end data solutions provider for enterprise.
In 2015, TeraGo made two acquisitions: first, enterprise cloud service provider RackForce Networks Inc. for $33 million, and then Ottawa-based cloud and managed services provider Codeninja Ltd., also known as BoxFabric.
In 2016, TeraGo Inc. wholly owned subsidiary TeraGo Networks bought the hosting business operated by Ottawa-based AirVM Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
Businesses can take a seven-minute test on the TeraGo site, to determine how exposed they are, and if eligible to be one of 10 organizations to receive a complimentary one-week assessment worth $7,500.