two people floating in a sea of papers on life rafts

Does your business depend on files and documents; customer, client, or patient information; or essential records? If the answer is yes, a disaster recovery plan is critical for your business.

When disaster strikes, the last thing you want to worry about is recovering all the paper files and records necessary for the business to proceed. If there were a flood or fire, you’d also be working to replace computers and office equipment, and finding a new work location.

Even if the disaster was theft or a small localized flood or fire that only damaged your files, the less time you can spend recovering information is more time you can spend on other aspects of your company.

That’s where River City Data can help. When you trust us to handle your data, you can rest assured knowing we protect it throughout any disaster. Contact River City Data to keep your company’s records, files, and other data safe, secure, and accessible through natural disasters, and cyber-attacks.

What is disaster recovery planning?

Many companies make efforts to construct a disaster recovery plan to resume operations in their business as soon as possible in the event of a disaster.

Catastrophic events, such as natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and technological equipment failure, can lead to downtime for any business. That downtime can lead to lost revenue, or worse if it threatens valuable client or patient data.

A 2015 study found that downtime that lasts for one hour can cost small companies $8,000, mid-size companies $74,000, and large companies $700,000.

Having a disaster recovery plan in place, you can reduce downtime and speed when business operations can resume.

Large tech-based corporations may have entire teams dedicated to disaster recovery. For smaller businesses, having such a group can be cost-prohibitive.

Some smaller companies try to add disaster recovery planning responsibilities to an existing employee’s task load. This shortcut often backfires, as the employee may be too busy to adequately plan for disasters or not appropriately trained in how to do so.

Hiring a data management service like River City Data can help your business prepare for the worst without placing the burden on current employees. Your employees can focus on their areas of expertise and responsibilities. The data management experts at River City Data handle the disaster recovery plan for your company’s data and records.

Whether you decide to hire a document management company to help with your disaster recovery plan or choose to forge your path, there are a few ways you can better prepare for a disaster.

Create a Priority List

Before disaster strikes, you can prepare by creating a priority list. Consider every single thing your business needs to operate.

Once you’ve listed everything, identify each item as Priority 1, Priority 2, or Priority 3.

Priority 1 items are those that are essential for your business to be up and running again. This group might include computers and specific apps that you use daily.

Priority 2 items are those that you need in a day. They aren’t the most urgent for business operations to resume, but they’re necessary for smooth sailing in the short term.

Priority 3 items are things that you can do without for at least a few days. Breaking down your business to the essential items for the operation will let you focus on a backup plan that prioritizes replacing those things.

Create a Disaster Recovery Team

This step is another that should occur long before the disaster hits. Think about the vital roles your company will need in the case of a tragic event or natural disaster.

For example, you might consider creating a disaster recovery team with the following:

the person who relays updates to internal employees
the person who gives updates to vendors or clients
the person who removes all salvageable material items from the workspace
an IT recovery director or team who is responsible for all technology
an insurance point person, who communicates with the insurance companies
a media (or social media) spokesperson, if warranted
a legal liaison, if needed

It is also a good idea to assign each integral role a backup person if the primary employee is on vacation or has left the company.

Creating a structured system in which each employee knows their responsibilities expedites a swift return to business operations. The best way to help your team cope with the disruption of a disaster by being as prepared as possible.

How River City Data Can Help With the Disaster Recovery Plan for Your Business

The best thing about reaching out to River City Data for help with your disaster recovery plan? The burden you’ll feel lifted from your shoulders when you can focus on the part of your business you love instead of planning for the worst.

You can trust our team at River City Data because we’ve been in the business of protecting business records for over 40 years. We use state-of-the-art software to scan documents and have the equipment to deal with high volume records and large formats.

We also index the data using any parameters you prefer. You then choose where that indexed, searchable data is stored — and if you choose the cloud, you know that it will be accessible wherever you can access the internet.

Cloud storage is the perfect choice if you’re concerned about losing the information contained in paper records in the case of a disaster. You can control which employees and clients access what data and when. Your business will be back up and running in no time!

If you’re ready to take the first step in preparing your business for an emergency, Contact River City Data today. Ask about disaster recovery planning and sleep easy tonight, knowing your business’s crucial data is safe.

What is DRaaS? And what are DRaaS solutions? While DRaaS would benefit countless people, many have never heard of it.

DRaaS, or Disaster Recovery as a Service, is a growing phenomenon in today’s world. With so much information digitally available and stored, it is essential to have a way to recover it should the worst happen.

If you own a business and you keep any digital records, and we mean any of them, you should look into the benefits of DRaaS.

At River City Data, we specialize in protecting, storing, handling, and modernizing your data and your business. We have been serving the great New London area, and beyond for 40 years, you can trust our experience.

Call us today for more information.

What is DRaaS?

DRaaS, or disaster recovery as a service, is a method of using the cloud to compute and backup your information and data. The reason for this cloud storage is that in the event of a disaster, your information and data would be secure.

Without DRaaS, you risk unknown costs and hardship should a disaster or total loss occur. If you do not back up your data to a safe place, you could lose years of information, including tax information, employee records, receipts, billing, and more.

However, you will find yourself appreciating DRaaS even in the absence of a disaster. Because this system allows for a full replication of your data in the cloud, it will serve as a peripheral infrastructure.

DRaaS will create a new environment that permits the business owner to operate their company on a daily basis while your central system is repaired.

You will never be without your information, even during routine maintenance, as the application works on a virtual machine.

DRaaS is often not a stand-alone service. When you meet with a data specialist, like those at River City Data, you will likely receive a DRP, or disaster recovery plan.

Why DRaaS Solutions?

There are many advantages to choosing DRaaS solutions for your business.

Multisite. DRaaS is entirely in the cloud, meaning it is not tied to a specific location. Your system can be cloned to many sites. This method will allow non-stop backup of your data.

Array Agnostic. DRaaS is versatile and does not favor one platform. No matter what the environment or vendor, DRaaS will work.

Comprehensive. As a business owner, you will choose what you want to be backed up. You can reduce costs by only choosing what is required for the backup.

Reasons to Choose DRaaS

If you are still on the fence, consider the many reasons to use DRaaS as a business solution in your organization.

Reduce the Cost of Disaster Recovery

If you are already aware of the importance of disaster recovery and are using a secondary site to store your data, you are well aware of the sometimes outrageous costs associated with this storage.

While you know these costs are necessary, they do not have to be so high.

Using these secondary storage locations have elevated costs associated with software licenses, storage, security, replication software, and more. However, choosing DRaaS solutions effectively eliminates many, if not most, of these costs.

With DRaaS, you will not pay for:

The payments on the physical space for the auxiliary storage site
Monthly utilities to power, cool, and provide bandwidth to the site
Buying or leasing the servers, storage, and network tools at the auxiliary site

Simplicity, Not Complacency

As you can see by the reasons already listed, a supplemental or secondary disaster recovery site is not for the faint of heart. If you were able to simplify the system, you could save time, money, and many headaches.

If the entire disaster recovery system were in the cloud, you would no longer have to maintain the secondary site or deal with the administrative, legal, or maintenance aspects.

Create a Cohesive System

If you have partners with different systems or even associates in your organization with disparate systems, DRaaS solutions can bridge the gap between these systems. DRaaS will work across systems to replicate data and be compatible with the incongruous systems.

DRaaS solutions are hardware, hypervisor, and application unassociated.

Save Resources

Maintaining a dated version of disaster recovery can be costly in more than just money. In older versions, it could take weeks or even months to create and construct the secondary site.

However, DRaaS can be up and going within a couple of hours or days. It all depends on how complex your system is.

An added benefit of this simpler system is that your IT group will save an enormous amount of time. They will not have to manage their own secondary disaster recovery site.

Comprehensive Solution

If you run your own secondary disaster recovery site, you know the costs as well as the limitations. You likely have to prioritize which servers to protect. Often, it is impossible to protect everything.

Using DRaaS solutions, companies can protect every server used, both physical and virtual. This protection is more accessible, more affordable, and done in a much more reasonable amount of time.

With DRaaS, more complete protection is also more affordable.

Call River City Today

If you are using an outdated disaster recovery system, or you don’t have any recovery system in place, talk to us about DRaaS solutions. At River City Data, we are well-versed in all things digital. We have years of experience with businesses and companies of all sizes.

At River City Data, we do more than just storage. We provide customers with document scanning, document preparation and digital conversion, document indexing, microfilm conversions, book conversions, and more.

Let us partner with you in all of your digital needs. Call River City Data today.

Data loss can be detrimental to a business’s well being and productivity. When disaster strikes, the only defense the company has is their level of preparation. In today’s world of increasing hackings, technology glitches, and natural disasters, it is essential to have a plan and be prepared.

Here at River City Data, we can help you prepare for any of these occurrences. Our company has specialized in all things data for the last 40 years.

Each of our Kofax certified experts is vetted and have current background checks. We are also BCA certified and HIPAA certified. You can rest assured that your data security and management needs are our top priority.

Label Your Documents

Before you begin to plan for your disaster data recovery, it is crucial to classify your documents in their order of importance. Start with the documents that are the most critical and end the recovery process with documents that are the least essential to the company’s operations.

Label the documents by these five categories: critical, essential, important, useful, and non-essential.

Critical Documents

Critical documents will be any documentation that your company may need to have to speed along the recovery.

Essential Documents

Essential documents will be documentation needed in the first 72 hours of the disaster that are vital to the company with daily functions.

Important Documents

Important documents are any documentation that is irreplaceable and crucial to your companies functions.

Useful Documents

Useful documents are any documentation that can be replaced in the event of a disaster but comes as an inconvenience to your company.

Non-Essential Documents

Non-essential documents would not hinder your companies function and are replaceable.

Once all of the documents are labeled, it is time to figure out storage for each of the categories of documents. Some options are the use of cloud storage, onsite storage of physical materials, or offsite storage.

Have A Backup Solution

Make sure to have an online cloud storage set in place. The cloud is not only a secure place for data but also convenient because of the ease of data recovery from a cloud.

Having a cloud also creates an easily accessible storage space for relevant documents that may not have any physical copies. In the case of a disaster, the cloud will provide an almost seamless recovery.

Keep physical copies in a safe location onsite. The documents can be kept in a locked storage room with fire and water protected filing cabinets.

Outsource your storage. You can have your data stored at an offsite location. Having the documents stored at an offsite location will help free up room in the office.

Risk Assessments

A crucial factor in document recovery is to assess the risk that each disaster can cause your company. The risk can be anything from technical, logistical, or environmental. It is also important to weigh how each of these disasters can impact your company.

Not every recovery plan is going to be the same for each of the disasters. The risk assessment will aid your company.

Assign a Recovery Team

Your plan is only as effective as the team of employees that you put in charge of it. Assign each person on the team a role and communicate their purpose to them. It is also important to brief each team member on their course of action in the document recovery if a disaster were to strike.

Outline the Plan

Provide written direction for the chain of events that will take place in case of a catastrophe. Provide visuals that will help your team understand the recovery plan.

The outline should include a plan for a variety of disasters. A disaster can range anything from a hacking situation, technical data loss, or a natural disaster. The outline will give concise directions on how to proceed in any of these events.

In a situation where your company’s valuable information is compromised, there needs to be a plan for informing patrons. Going forward extra measures need to be put in place to keep PII (Personal Identifiable Information) safe.

A technical data disaster can be a technical error with technology that can cause a loss of data. Knowing that these occurrences happen and preparing for them is essential to your company’s overall wellbeing. This is where a cloud comes in handy for ensuring that your data is backed up on a drive.

Having an IT company to reach out to (if necessary) can be beneficial for data recovery. They should be able to get your system back up and running or help you recover any lost data.

Data loss through a natural disaster can be extremely frustrating and can set your company back on their work. It is crucial to establish a safe area where copies of hard data are stored. You will want to have document storage that is going to protect against fire and water damage.

Make Updates

Your plan will grow and evolve as your company’s needs and wants may change. Review your data recovery plan and make any updates or changes to it when necessary. You want to ensure that your outline is current and aligns with your business objectives.

Inform your staff about any updates or changes made to the plan. Create any necessary new visuals and reiterate each person’s role.

Methods of Recovery

Knowing how you are going to recover your documents is an essential aspect of the process, whether you re-download documents from a drive or have to restore physical documents from natural disaster damages.

Documents can be restored from water damage by putting them into a vacuum chamber to be freeze-dried to remove any excess water that will turn into ice crystals and vaporize.

Or they can go through a dehumidification process where the water will slowly evaporate out of the materials to dry them out. However, proper storage methods of physical documents can save you from having to outsource to a third party for document restoration.

Here at River City Data, we are here to assist you with finding the best way to keep and store your documents. It is better to expect the unexpected and have a plan in a place in case a disaster strikes your business.

Insurance adjuster and beautiful woman in abandoned building

Disaster can strike with minimal warning. Even if you have any advance notice, you will likely be focusing on essential things, like the safety of your family. Thankfully, there are disaster recovery services to help after the fact.

One of the last things you want to be worrying about following a disaster is whether or not your pictures and papers have survived. If you find yourself in this distressing position, River City Data is here to help.

If you have found yourself in a situation where you need help restoring your home or business to normal after a disaster, or if you want to pre-emptively back up your data and documents, contact River City Data. We have the expertise and skills to recover and safeguard your essential items.

Types of Natural Disaster

You never know what kinds of disasters are in store. From tornadoes to hurricanes, from floods to fires, there are many things nature can throw your way.

..While residents of Minnesota should be safe from hurricanes and the like, it is best always to prepare yourself. You never know when a thunderstorm, tornado, or flash flood can hit.

Tornado

Tornadoes are the result of air rising, cooling, and moisture condensing. When the force of the lifting of the air is strong enough, the updraft can have intense winds. This updraft is where tornadoes form.

This column of air can be violent and cause winds up to 300 miles per hour. The tornado touches both the enormous cloud and the Earth. These storms, depending on their strength, can tear apart everything in their path. Tornadoes are rated on the Enhanced Fujita scales, i.e., F1 to F5.

Severe Storms

Severe storms can be anything from thunderstorms to lightning storms. Depending on the type of storm, damage can vary. Thunderstorms can result in immense rain and flooding, while the electrical charge from lightning storms can cause a fire.

Hurricanes

When you think of a hurricane, you generally think of the tropics and warm weather. While this is typically true, hurricanes can occur in other regions.

A hurricane is a low-pressure system with a counterclockwise circulation that can come with thunderstorms.

Hurricanes can be classified as tropical depressions with maximum sustained winds of 38 mph, a tropical storm with sustained winds between 39 and 73 mph, and a hurricane with sustained winds over 74 mph. Hurricanes are categorized on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale from Category 1 to Category 5.

Floods

Floods can occur from a variety of causes. Primarily, a flood occurs when there is an excess of water that is unable to clear or flow away effectively. Whether a flood happens in your home from a busted pipe or a storm with excessive rain, this flooding of water can damage everything they contact.

Fire

From wildfires to house fires, fires are devastating. Sometimes things can be recovered, but often there is little left to work with after a fire.

Earthquake

The Earth’s crust is full of points of weakness, or fault lines. An earthquake occurs when stress is built up under the surface along these lines. When the pressure becomes too much for rocks or the crust, energy is released and becomes an earthquake.

Vibrations, also called seismic waves, radiate from the center of the earthquake- Picture ripples in a pool of water. These waves shake the ground and can cause a large amount of damage.

Earthquakes can happen anywhere and are measured on the Richter Scale.

Disaster Recovery Services

At River City Data, we perform a variety of services after a natural disaster. From repairing and protecting microfilm to digitizing documents, we can help you recover from the worst-case scenario.

Process

Typically after a natural disaster, several things have to happen to recover and protect your documents.

1. Inventory. The first thing we do is to inventory your documents. We want a thorough account of everything you have before doing any work. This inventory will help us determine which materials are salvageable and which need to be shredded for your protection.
2. Transport. After the inventory, we will transport your documents to a facility where the restoration can occur. You can rest assured that we take the utmost care with your papers and monitor the chain of custody.
3. Clean. After the documents are safely dried, they are carefully cleaned. Careful consideration is taken to ensure all silt, soot, or mold is removed from your documents.
4. Sanitize. We care about your health and safety, so we ensure that we sanitize everything before returning anything to you.
5. Return. After cleaning and sanitizing your documents, we perform a thorough audit so we can ensure we have everything with which you trusted us. We return the items taking special care with the chain of custody again.

Why Disaster Recovery Services

If a disaster has struck your home or business, the last thing you want to worry about is recovering your documents so you can return to your routine.

Whether you are concerned about your personal records, from deeds to licenses to passports and everything in between, or you run a business and depend on these documents for your livelihood, you can count on River City Data.

We take the utmost care in recovering your documents so you can focus on getting back to life. You can focus on picking up the pieces with your family while we focus on your documents.

Preparing for the Future

When we are recovering your documents after a natural disaster, ask us about digitizing them. You won’t have to worry in the future should the unthinkable happen again. You will know your documents are stored digitally and, therefore, safe from natural disasters.

Being proactive now can save you headaches and potential heartache down the road. Digitizing your records now, even before a disaster strikes, is essential. Contact River City Data today and ask how we can give you peace of mind going forward.

At River City Data, we take care of your documents so you can get on with your life.

How to Create a Disaster Recovery Plan for Your Business