Any unplanned event which prevents the business from operating normally may be qualified as disaster. Planned events which have unexpected outcomes can as well be considered as a disaster. There are two main categories for classifying disasters:
| Chronical |
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| Natural |
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The consequences of a disaster can be classified in three distinct categories in a company:
| Financial | Service unavailability can rapidly lead to an important loss of income for companies selling products online for example. This permanent or temporary loss of income can thus impact on the finances of the business and may, in extreme cases, lead to bankruptcy. |
| Reputation | The company may also suffer a loss of credibility towards customers, partners and suppliers. |
| Penal | Existing legislation on data retention, including financial, can impose financial penalties for failure to consult documents lost in the disaster, the indirect effect is again financial. |
Loss of data is probably more devastating than any other service disruption. The most difficult element to replace in an infrastructure is data, and the malfunctions resulting from such a loss is often very difficult to overcome. Recovery is the most critical aspect of data restoration. Due to the dispersion of data, the company becomes increasingly dependent towards the availability of its data and thus more vulnerable to disaster.
Data protection is the implementation of technologies guaranteeing the availability of data in case of accidental loss or corruption. Tools available are backup, archiving and replication. The process of making data available are restoration and recovery. A data protection policy should take into account technical parameters which is maximum loss of data permissible (RPO), the maximum interruption tolerated (RTO) and the backup window. The tools and investment necessary for the protection should be weighed accordingly to the value of data to be protected. A data protection policy should operate in the same way as an insurance which covers you totally or partially covers according to your needs and circumstances. It is sometimes difficult to estimate, however it is probably easier to question in a more general way:
At each of these issues, the impact on the operations of the business are more or less severe depending on the situation. The policy of data protection should be declined according to the direct and indirect costs and the probability that the disaster occurs.
This section helps you better understand the challenges involved in computer data protection as well as the various technologies and solutions available on the market.
A technical glossary is also available for learning the terminology used in this subject field. We recommend that you also visit the SNIAwebsite for further information in the subject field of computer data storage.
