Financial Companies Have a False Sense of Security

While you may be taking some precautions, such as securing and backing up your sensitive data, sometimes that’s not enough. There is a common misconception that data is safe if backed up once a day, but this outdated practice is no longer sufficient for several reasons:

• If you forget to perform the backup or the backup process fails, you’re not protected.
• If you only back up your files once a day, you’re left vulnerable to the loss of an entire day’s work.
• If you don’t properly validate your backup files, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise when you actually try to use those files to restore your company’s operations.
• If you only back up your files on-site, you could lose them too—leaving you with no way to meet client requests.
• If you only back up your raw data, rather than all your application and server configuration files, it could take several days to restore your practice —because you will also have to rebuild your servers, operating systems, applications, etc.

Some financial services firms are turning to business interruption insurance to cover the costs to rebuild, restore, or regain lost income. However, while an insurance provider may write you a check for the cost of a server that gets damaged because of a broken pipe, it won’t shield you from damaged or lost client relationships. Ultimately, your reputation isn’t something for which you can easily be compensated.

How Vulnerable Are You?

If your company identifies as a business that doesn’t have the IT resources to effectively recover from a major outage, make sure you’re weighing all of the factors around the costs of downtime. Here are the facts:

• US businesses lose $12 billion annually due to data loss.

• 93% of companies that lose their data center for 10+ days file for bankruptcy within one year.