Playing Favorites with Your Data: A Disaster Recovery Article
In the current regulatory and political climate, companies are examining the way they protect their most valuable data. In the event of a disaster or audit, businesses want to know they can easily recover or locate their vital information. One of the first steps in this process is determining the data essential for the survival of your business.

How Valuable Is Your Data?

Not all types of data are the same. Most of your organization's data is valuable. Some of it is extremely valuable and/or absolutely critical to the survival of your business. Without it, your business simply cannot recover. It is this last category of data that can truly be called mission-critical data.

How Much Can You Afford to Lose?

One of the first steps in the process of developing a disaster recovery plan is to classify company data according to Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). The Recovery Time Objective is the maximum acceptable downtime for that system. In other words, how long can your business continue without access to the data? The Recovery Point Objective is the maximum acceptable loss of data. Since your data will only be current to the last backup process, how much “recent” data can you afford to lose?

The shorter the RPO, the more current your backup data needs to be. The data that is classified as mission-critical requires up-to-the-minute data currency (the most current data available) to ensure that the recovery point is seconds or minutes, rather than hours, days, or even weeks.

Balancing the Tradeoffs

In an ideal world, organizations would develop backup processes that support up-to-the-minute currency for all their data. In the real world of limited resources, however, this approach just isn't feasible. Organizations must balance the tradeoff between currency of data and investment in resources. Getting this balance right is essential. Under-investing in data currency can result in the collapse of the business in the event of a disaster. Over-investing in protecting non-critical data can tie up valuable resources better used elsewhere in your disaster recovery and business continuity programs.

Continuous Backup Maximizes Data Currency

Once you have classified your organization's data according to Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives, you need to develop and implement appropriate backup technologies and processes accordingly. For your most critical data with the shortest RPO, implement a solution, such as electronic vaulting, that supports continuous backup. Unlike periodic backup processes that ensure recovery of data only up to the point that the backup was done, continuous backup closes the window for potentially lost data. While you can never absolutely guarantee zero loss of data, continuous backup solutions can minimize data loss to minutes or even seconds.

Conclusion

The first step to ensuring your business can both operate efficiently on a daily basis and survive in the event of a disaster is to classify and prioritize the different types of data in your organization. This is usually done according to Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives so your company can identify its mission-critical data. Mission-critical data is data with the shortest RPO - data your company cannot survive without. A way to support the RPO for this data is to invest in solutions that will maximize the currency of your backup data. The solution that provides the highest level of data currency is one that provides continuous backup. However, the necessity for continuous backup needs to be balanced with your company's investment in resources. By protecting your company's mission-critical information - playing favorites with your organization's most important data - you can help ensure its survival in the event of a disaster.