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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 |