5 DR Trends That Deserve Your Attention

Disaster recovery is one of the most important topics in the business community. And if you’re the type to put stock in market research, you know it’s a discussion that needs to be had. According to IBM’s infographic The Human Side of Disaster Recovery, which includes data sourced by StorageCraft, just 60 percent of employers believe their employees would know how to respond in a disaster scenario. To complicate matters, only 41 percent of companies in the United States have a backup site to shift their operations to in the event of a disaster.

Sure, having some semblance of a plan is better than no plan at all, but failed preparation often comes at a high price. Whether it’s losing revenue or losing the confidence of your customers, the cost of downtime potentially becomes greater with every passing second.

In our ongoing effort to make sure you have all the bases covered, we’ll explore some of the hottest trends in disaster recovery today.

1. Back up to the Cloud

Our post 5 Ways the Hybrid Cloud Improves Disaster Recovery took an in-depth look at how the cloud is revolutionizing the DR landscape. Gone are the days when physical sites, servers, and disk drives were the foundation of a backup system. At the very least, the cloud provides the luxury of having another backup destination for your data. At a more advanced level, it can replicate the foremost core of your IT environment and act as an offsite safe haven for backup copies. View the cloud as a key addition to your overall DR strategy rather than a full-on replacement, and you’re halfway there.

2. Flexible Backup Sites

So you have a fully redundant data center and the best backup software money can buy. That’s fantastic, but without an offsite DR environment in the cards, you’re setting all those pretty little eggs in one basket. In the past you had two options: Splurge on a backup site, or lease space for your servers and storage devices through a colocation arrangement. Today, even smaller firms that lack the resources to manage a second facility can afford a secondary site that springs into action if their primary data center is compromised. More importantly, they can pass the buck of physical maintenance on to a cloud service provider better equipped to handle it.

3. Third-Party Outsourcing

According to Markets and Markets, the Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) vertical market reach $11.11 billion by 2021. The meteoric rise of DRaaS suggests that the business community is steadily embracing the idea of outsourcing critical IT functions to third-party suitors. Whether it’s improving your DR capabilities or simply gaining access to the management expertise you’re lacking internally, the benefits of IT outsourcing are hard to ignore. Even if it just frees up time and resources by significantly reducing your in-house responsibilities, this trend might be worth the risk.

4. Digital Communications

In a not-so-distant past, phone and email were the primary modes of communication. Of course they’re still around, but now you have other, more immediate options at your disposal. In addition to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, a growing number of social networking platforms help you send word to staff, customers, and vendors faster than what is often possible via traditional channels. Each method can be configured to operate seamlessly across laptops, smartphones, and tablets to provide the utmost flexibility during crisis mode.

5. MDR

The proliferation of ransomware, phishing, and sophisticated social engineering attacks has made the threat landscape more dangerous than ever. If you’re an MSP or would simply like to rest easier at night, MDR is the trend to watch. Managed Detection and Response is a fast growing industry that goes beyond intrusion detection ad prevention by continuously monitoring your network, alerting your security team of verified exploits, and rapidly responding to confirmed security incidents. Gartner anticipates improving detection and response capabilities through means such as MDR being a chief priority through 2020.

Building the Ultimate DR Strategy

There is certainly no shortage of trends and technologies in the ever-evolving disaster recovery space. It can be exhausting, but the good thing coming out of all this is the plethora of options at your fingertips. You’ll never find a one-size-fits-all solution, but what you can do is build a custom solution that maximizes your returns and perfectly fits your disaster recovery needs.

Contel Bradford is a professional of many trades– aspiring screenwriter, affiliate marketer in training, published author. He excels at writing articles about internet technology, specializing in topics that range from email marketing and web hosting to social media and SEO.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.