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When Benjamin Franklin said , “ If you fail to plan , you are planning to fail ’ the American statesman and scientist would perhaps have had little idea how relevant those words would be to those in business some 200 years later .
For SMEs and those firms operating in climates where resources and in-house expertise to deal with threats of business interruption are scarce , the lack of a business continuity plan is often the elephant in the room .
When you consider that figures obtained from the Department for Business , Innovation & Skills show that SMEs accounted for at least 99.5 % of the businesses in every main industry sector and generated in excess of £ 1.9 trillion in combined annual
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turnover last year , this becomes a problem not just for these firms but the wider economy as a whole . Add to this the fact that SMEs , on average , faced five cyber attacks during the past 12 months , according to a study by Appstractor , and the problem becomes even clearer . Less than half of those surveyed felt they had the means to properly defend themselves either , suggesting security and encryption software was often tailored for individuals or large corporations and governments . Rather than attempting to muddle through this themselves and forced by new compliance measures , such as the GDPR , many businesses are enlisting the help of experts who can provide cost-effective IT monitoring solutions and proper disaster recovery planning , |
should the unthinkable occur . Indeed , the figures around business interruption make for stark reading . In the UK 70 % of businesses suffering catastrophic data loss were closed within 18 months , according to the Department for Trade and Industry .
With outsourced real-time IT monitoring solutions SMEs become proactive In their approach to IT delivery and operational effectiveness . This enables them to take a hard look at business metrics to identify and predict any potential problems and failures in advance of them occurring and therefore impacting on the services being delivered .
Implementing a specialist disaster recovery solution in tandem takes this one step further . This enables businesses
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to recover both their files and IT infrastructure to meet pre-planned recovery time objectives ( RTOs ). For those businesses virtualising the likes of Microsoft Exchange , SharePoint and SQL , this could see your business back up and running within minutes rather than days .
That last bit will not only relieve the pressure and headaches faced when such instances occur , but will help maintain perceived brand value and trust with both customers and business partners alike . And in today ’ s real-time society that could mean the difference between failure and success .
For a no-obligation chat with one of CIS ’ s experts about your IT requirements , call : 01367 700 555
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For more info : www . cisltd . com |