Disaster and Business Continuity Planning is a Must for Today’s Business Environment

With the fifth year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack and the hurricane season upon us, the awareness among business leaders
of the need for disaster and business continuity planning is at an all time high.

Business owners invest a tremendous amount of time, money and resources to make their ventures successful, so it would seem natural for owners
to take steps to protect those investments. While the importance of disaster and business continuity planning is self-evident, the urgency of the
task is often blunted by the immediate demands of the workplace. Often the business person is prone to the all-too-human tendency to believe that
“it won’t happen to me”. In the meantime, businesses will continue to suffer setbacks that often could have been reduced or prevented
altogether had someone taken the time to plan and take action on strategies to recover if the unexpected occurs.

We all recognize that disaster can strike anywhere, at any time. Disaster and business continuity planning is an integral part of any successful
business plan.

Consider the following:

• An estimated 25 percent of businesses do not reopen following a major disaster, according to the Institute for Business and Home Safety.
• The number of declared major disasters more than doubled in the 1990s.
• A business can be hurt indirectly when a disaster strikes customers or another business, such as a supplier or distributor.
• The realities of a post 9/11 world and increasing dependency on computer technology call for additional protection of business operations.
• The 9/11 Commission emphasized the critical importance of preparedness in protecting business assets and safeguarding employee’s lives.

“Private-sector preparedness is not a luxury; it is a cost of doing business in the post-9/11 world. It is ignored
at tremendous potential cost in lives, money, and national security.”
– 9/11 Commission Final Report, Chapter 12

When convincing people of the need for disaster preparedness, too much emphasis is placed on dramatic, worst-case scenarios – as if these
were the only possible disasters that might occur. Many businesses are impacted on a daily basis by unexpected events. Thieves steal, fire burns,
weather and water destroys, equipment fails, even human error can impact business operations.

While disaster and business continuity planning as a whole entails addressing many aspects of a business operation, how we protect and our ability
recover one of our most critical business assets – our data – is an important element.

Many businesses only backup to a local device, leaving their data vulnerable to a local disaster. For this reason many companies have made the
move to an online backup and recovery solution for the critical task of data backup. In addition to the added security and reliability that an online
backup service provides, it allows businesses to get their data off-site and stores it in secure data centers away from local or regional disasters
that may impact their business.

“Backing up data to a local device means that any catastrophic event that destroyed a company’s primary server
would likely destroy the backup media as well,” said Adam W. Couture, principal research analyst for Gartner. “Companies hoping to protect
their data for the long haul must look at using remote backup and recovery service providers.”

AXIS can help you check Remote Backup and Recovery Solution off your disaster planning check list through our partnership with CoreVault. CoreVault
has the right online backup solution for companies like yours that are serious about protecting their business-critical data. For more information
on CoreVault solutions, visit us at AXIS or e-mail us at info@axisglobalpartners.com.