What level of resilience is needed?

Different industries have unique requirements for resilience. In the banking industry, for example, access to accurate, real-time buying and selling data is critical and business continuity and resiliency are considered so important that they are subject to specific regulations such as Basel II. However, for the majority of businesses, the rules and regulations are not so strict, and yet the implications of a network collapse without sufficient backup systems can be equally severe. This is particularly true when you consider that, according to the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 80 per cent of small to medium sized businesses go out of business within 18 months of experiencing a major network problem and 90 per cent of businesses that lose data in a disaster are forced to shut within two years.

The indisputable fact is that all business premises, no matter what the organisation’s size or industry, face the risk of disasters and they need to bring certainty to how they store and use their information. Firms need to be able to move their data around freely and ensure that it is 100 per cent backed up from every site, minimising the exposure to risk at any one site and making sure that the most important data is prioritised.