Disaster recovery (DR) is one of the most important objectives in any organisation and with it, business continuity. It’s critical to understand exactly what it will take to get a business back up and running as quickly as possible when disaster strikes. While some experts see disaster recovery and cybersecurity as separate initiatives run by different teams, there’s enough correlation to make each critical to the overall effectiveness of the other. “Disaster recovery is post an event,” says Byron Horn-Botha, business unit head at Arcserve Southern Africa. “Business continuity is about ensuring an acceptable uptime and continuous uptime, so that users are not even aware when a system is down. When disaster recovery is engaged, nine times out of 10, users are affected – that’s the difference.”

One of the reasons is the rise of ransomware. According to Ria Pinto, country general manager and technology leader at IBM South Africa, the average time of cybercriminals completing a ransomware attack has dropped from two months to less than four days. “In our region, Middle East and Africa, the most common method of cyberattacks (27%) used is backdoor deployments, which contribute to the $3.36 million data breach costs absorbed by South African organisations. Where businesses keep their data matters more than ever,” she says. “Organisations should not only plan to protect their data, but they should have contingency mechanisms designed to prevent or minimise data loss and business disruptions as a result of catastrophic events such as equipment failures, localised or national power outages, cyberattacks, civil emergencies, criminal attacks, and natural disasters.”