Disaster Recovery Is the Secret Weapon of Cybersecurity

With more than 500,000 new malware samples being found every day, the question isn’t if your clients will be targeted, but rather when. As an MSP, the real question you’ve got to ask yourself is: What happens when my client’s unwary employee clicks on a malicious attachment or link?

For service providers helping small and midsize businesses (SMBs), offering disaster recovery (DR) services can be the salvation during a cyberattack. It can buy you time to stop the damage while keeping your client operational.

When executed properly, an effective DR plan is the secret weapon MSPs need in the fight against cyberthreats.

Cybersecurity Risks to SMBs

Most SMBs (60%) believe they are immune from ransomware and other cyberattacks because of their small size. That’s why 43% of SMBs don’t have any cyber defense plans in place.

Unfortunately, no business is too small or insignificant for a cybercriminal. Every company has a bank account, and the increased use of automation in cyberattacks means a small company can be targeted just as easily as a global corporation.

The only difference? Larger companies have the technology and staff to counter the latest threats. Your SMB clients cannot afford such resources in-house, so they rely on you to keep their systems protected and running.

Being able to spin up a client’s systems in the cloud during an attack allows you to counter the threat while minimizing the downtime that can cripple their business.

The Importance of Uptime

For all the benefits traditional cybersecurity solutions offer in defending data, applications and systems, they rarely take the business’s uptime into consideration.

A successful attack can take critical systems and applications offline for a long time. The length of time and amount of effort needed to restore those systems has a direct impact on the client’s business:

• First, there’s the financial impact, since unexpected downtime costs between $8,600 and $100,000 an hour. That can add up quickly for an SMB.
• Second, there’s the reputational damage and loss of customer confidence clients suffer while their operations are halted: 37% of SMBs report losing customers because of unexpected downtime.

The short recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) provided by a DR service get client systems back online faster, minimizing disruption and data loss.

In addition to ensuring business continuity and maximum uptime for your client’s business, delivering a quality DR service also enhances your ability to address the underlying attack. While your client’s vital systems are kept operational, you can assess the damage, restore any affected data, investigate how the attack occurred, and identify the steps needed to prevent a future breach.

Getting Cybersecurity and DR to Work Together

At Acronis, we believe an integrated approach to protection is the best one an MSP can take. Rather than trying to manage separate solutions, an integrated platform like Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced Disaster Recovery can deliver all of the capabilities needed to provide a comprehensive set of services–from reliable backup to fast disaster recovery to next-gen cybersecurity that stops even the newest cyberattacks–via one management console.

The integrated approach of cyber protection provides MSPs with the advanced anti-malware they need to defend their clients, as well as the secret weapon of disaster recovery that reduces the impact of unexpected downtime–whatever the cause.

Last year, nearly a third (28%) of all data breaches involved SMBs, and experts warn that the trend will continue as criminals increasingly use advanced technology to maximize their attacks. By helping your clients understand the threat they face, and how an effective DR plan can prevent the worst effects of being a victim, then you can better protect their business–while creating new opportunities for your MSP business.

 Kris Schulze is the Disaster Recovery Program Manager at Acronis. A writer and marketing professional, she has published pieces on a wide variety of topics in B2B technology, including disaster recovery, data privacy and ransomware.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.