Data is a snowflake; it can quickly get damaged or, adversely, destroyed. Other than being prone to be attacked, there are more unfortunate circumstances where data can be damaged, like a coffee spill on the server, a fire outbreak in the office, cyberattacks, and such.
Consumers are like time and tide, they wait for nothing, and if your company is having a downtime, you might lose a client or two. This will further lead to a decrease in revenue and profits – to onboard success forever, companies must do tight disaster recovery planning.
The manufacturing industry produces loads and tons of data annually. Data is the core of any manufacturing corporation; this allows them to see customers’ changing demands over the years – it will enable manufacturers to see the latest trends. The big sharks of this industry can also change the course of trends by visiting past trends. This blog will teach you potent steps to mitigate risk and optimize disaster recovery.
1. Identify the Threats and Risks
Manufacturing companies have to opt for the most infallible data recovery optimization that reduces or, better yet, eliminates any data damage risks. Small businesses and new startups usually don’t opt for disaster recovery plans or optimization; upon any tragic state of affairs, they never get the data back.
Before taking steps to mitigate risks, it is essential to know the potential risks and threats. This can be done by researching the most common risks and using your imagination on the kind of cyberattacks that may occur.
Companies should create a list of issues that include human errors, hurricanes, fires, power outages, etc. It would help if you also benefited from the research reports that point to future cyber attack risks and threats. Remember to identify these problems by keeping your industry and geographic location in view.
2. List Down Employee Devices
Small and new companies cease to compete with the big fish in the sea. Manufacturing companies should take the most effective steps to mitigate risks to prevent a data disaster. This is one of the most critical steps to mitigate the risks of a data disaster, and it will allow companies to catalyze disaster recovery optimization.
In this step, you must gather all the employees and list assets needing disaster recovery optimization. These assets include cell phones, cloud services, software and servers, connected workstations and network hardware, and such.
To categorize the A-listed assets can include servers and software, and the B-listed assets may consist of cell phones and other connected devices. Know that every device connected to the internet is a loose end for any cyberattack – securing it will not only prevent any threat and risks but also prevent any hacker from reaching data and records.
3. Plan According to Business Policies
Manufacturing industries have been following multiple steps to mitigate risks and threats to prevent data loss. This is also why in 2015, the DRaaS (Data Recovery as a Service) market was predicted to reach 1.4 billion U.S. dollars – and the figure only went higher.
Companies prioritize their reputation, regulatory compliance, finances, and operations; these things should be kept in view before climbing the first step toward disaster recovery optimization
This will allow companies to apply data recovery solutions to the most critical parts of the business. This can be done by creating a risk assessment report of every policy and business need and seeing how your company will be affected if one is under threat or at risk of cyberattack.
With this done, employees and concerned teams can focus on recovering the most important part of the business. This step will enable companies to recover data in the fastest and most secure way possible.
4. Multiple Disaster Recovery Locations
A disaster recovery optimization plan includes several steps to mitigate risks and threats to data. This can allow companies to dodge heavy data losses and maintain their dignity even if they have lost data for some reason.
One of many steps to mitigate in the manufacturing industry, this one is also considered a last resort. No matter how many precautions a company takes to prevent data loss, unforeseen occurrences occur most unimaginably.
This is why companies also invent heavily on multiple data recovery sites. To do this, companies may hire a separate team, which can require numerous resources.
Manufacturing businesses can store data using automated archiving software, creating multiple backups within the systems, creating a secondary data server, opting for cloud storage solutions, and using physical storage. In addition, companies can recover data in a shorter time from a different location if data is lost from more than one site.
5. Hire the Experts
No matter how advanced data disaster recovery software you get for the systems, there is still a need for human resources. Experts can help you suggest the best data recovery solutions and effective plans and can save a lot of data in an emergency. The employer has to have immense knowledge of cybersecurity and related technologies.
The employer has to ensure that the hired team has the required and polished set of expertise and skills. Such professionals will be able to tackle any kind of downtime and speed up the data recovery process. It is the job of the employer to designate the responsibility of data recovery experts.
This will make the employees understand their duties and responsibilities – to make sure that all staff are aware of their work and perform safety drills for evaluation. In this way, your employees will know how to respond and notify the higher authorities when data is threatened.
6. Document Every Plan of Action
It becomes hard to devise a solution when the data is breached or attacked; companies should list answers to protect data and prevent downtime. Companies are now investing in disaster recovery programs to prevent end-time data recovery solutions (which can be super expensive).
This is one of the most cardinal steps to mitigate risks in the manufacturing industry, as companies have to onboard every person who deals with data in one way or the other.
Designated experts have to note or document every step decided to secure data, make copies and distribute among them. Every person in the organization needs to be aware of the steps to mitigate risks and protect data.
With this implementation, every company department can recover data and re-establish systems. The documentation should involve detailed steps to recover data in the easiest way possible.
This should also include the steps to replace any hardware or software. In specific manufacturing sectors, such documentation and steps to mitigate risks are shared with the customers.
7. Create an Emergency Protocol for Instant Response
A data recovery plan must be initiated even if using a fully robust data recovery software solution. This is done by training your professionals to transform themselves into an emergency response team (ERT).
This team should know the triggers and when to launch specific steps to mitigate risks and threats. All staff members should be connected with the ERT at all times so that everyone knows who to contact in an emergency.
The emergency response team and data recovery team are almost the same – you can say that DRT is a more significant part of ERT. The ERT notifies the DRT and works on recovering data and resuming the business services for customers. The emergency response team collaborates with the rest of the staff to guide them about different steps to continue with business operations.
8. Limit Access to Data
Data in the wrong hands can be terrible for any company – even though data is everything to do with every staff member; there should be restrictions on each level.
Out of several steps to mitigate risks in the manufacturing industry, this one involves making different levels of data and giving access to those tiers according to the designation of employees. This means selective staff members can see and use specific data.
You can opt for a solution software that records every employee’s movement when they are using data servers. For example, if an employee downloads a particular record containing data, that activity will be recorded and undeletable.
This is a good option for those manufacturing companies with remote employees, enabling easy management and providing a unified view of data servers.
9. Alternative Business Continuity Plans
Customers turn a deaf ear, and they don’t care if there is any damage to the servers – it is the job of the company to pay heed to their obligations at all costs. This is why manufacturing companies should have a secondary business continuity plan to inform their customers of any operations delays.
Companies can create an alternative business continuity plan keeping the power needs, supply chain, potential risks, and communication medium in mind. This alternative plan should be tested repeatedly to ensure that even if matters take days to settle, customers should be attended to at all times.
10. Testing Data Recovery Plans
A data recovery plan is flawed, and even the tried and tested one fails at the time of crisis. This is why manufacturing companies are suggested to test their data recovery optimization plans multiple times.
This can be done by revising the plan of action with various scenarios – companies can try this with bogus data and see how the results turn out. With the outcomes, the company can then decide on single or various solutions.
This can also benefit companies to ensure that their current systems are compatible with the implemented data recovery procedures and solutions. They can also see which part of the data servers needs extra attention, which will automatically show potential in the data recovery optimization.
11. Update Data Recovery Solutions
All of the above steps to mitigate risks in the manufacturing industry will only work if you have updated the current data recovery solutions. Whether your company is using software or human resources, there is a continuous need for editing.
Businesses expand or shrink, and with such change, data recovery solutions should be flexible to implement new protocols.
This will also allow companies to see whether the latest or updated data recovery solutions are working well with the current systems. Cyberattacks and threats cannot be predicted or prevented, but they can be slowed down by having the most updated data recovery solutions.
12. Create a Congenital Backup
The final and one of the most crucial steps to mitigate risks and threats is creating a subordinate data backup. This can be done by opting for cloud-based data backup or disaster recovery.
This step can allow companies to recover right after the disaster has occurred. This is also insurance since cloud-based systems are secure and easy to access. Companies are therefore suggested to find the most reliable and well-reputed cloud vendor or provider.
The TakeAway
All these steps to mitigate risks guard the company’s reputation against all kinds of cyberattacks, data disasters, or damage. Data holds more value than gold, and every manufacturing business is wholly and solely based on its records and files. A single distortion in data transmission and communication can cost dearly.
Small and large manufacturing companies should opt for ShareArchiver as we have the top-grade data recovery optimization solutions and services. Our primary focus is to provide the fastest data recovery, optimized recovery time, and recovery point objectives. Explore our services now to implement best disaster recovery practices for your manufacturing company or business.
