Putting the Risks of Data Loss and Business Downtime in Dollar Figures

While more and more companies are investing in disaster recovery and preparedness, there are still many remaining that have yet to follow suit. All organizations, no matter how big or small, should have a data backup and recovery plan.

The problem is that some businesses don’t think it’s worth it to invest money into disaster recovery. Their mentality is the same as someone who passes on travel insurance; it’s just a superfluous expense that won’t pay itself off in the future. Except the monetary risks of forgoing disaster recovery planning are much more extreme.

And maybe that’s the problem that some organizations have. They’ve heard about the risks and consequences of not backing up data and having a disaster recovery plan, but it doesn’t resonate as much as the cost of the service. Perhaps if businesses saw how much money they could lose, they’d take disaster recovery more seriously.

Thankfully, we now have access to those statistics. The Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council released a new report in 2014. They asked respondents how much money they lost because of a lack of strategy planning and these were the answers:

36.7%: No cost
18.3%: $1000 – $6000
12.5%: $6001 – $10,000
7.5%: $10,001 – $20,000
5.4%: $20,001 – $50,000
10%: $50,001 – $100,000
3.3%: $100,001 – $500,000
2.5%: $500,001 – $1 Million
1.7%: $1 Million – $5 Million
2.1%: Over $5 Million
You can see that 36.7% of respondents were lucky enough not to lose any money. But that means that 63.3% of respondents lost at least $1,000. Many lost much more. The report also says that when critical applications are down, businesses can lose more than $5,000 per hour.

If your business still doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan, hopefully these statistics shed some light on the financial need for one. If you know a business owner or organization leader who wants to save money, let them know that they have to invest a little on disaster recovery so not to spend thousands in repercussions.

If you would like more information about disaster recovery, contact us.