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Disaster Recovery for Businesses: Why Having a Plan B Is Non-Negotiable

In business, unpredictability is a constant. A rogue employee clicks on a phishing email. A fire guts your server room. Load-shedding escalates to blackouts. Suddenly, your systems are down, your data is gone, and your revenue is on pause, if not in free fall. This is where Disaster Recovery (DR) becomes more than just a checkbox in an audit. It becomes your business’s safety net, life jacket, and get-out-of-chaos plan all rolled into one.

At Centric Data, we’ve seen it all. From ransomware attacks that froze entire networks to electrical issues that wiped out on-premises infrastructure. Yet time and again, businesses with strong DR plans not only survived, they thrived after the crisis.

This article explains why DR matters, what a modern DR strategy looks like, and how your business can build one that does not just exist on paper but works under pressure.

What Is Disaster Recovery (Really)?

Disaster recovery refers to the strategies, tools, and processes a business puts in place to restore IT systems, data, and operations after a disaster. That “disaster” could be anything from:

• A cyberattack
• Flood, fire, or earthquake
• Power failures or load-shedding
• Hardware failures
• Human error
• Software bugs
• Political unrest or civil disruption

Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity, a broader discipline focused on keeping the business operational. DR is more narrowly focused on IT resilience.

Why It Matters: The High Cost of Downtime

Downtime is expensive. According to a Gartner report, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute, which translates to over $300,000 per hour. For SMEs in Southern Africa, the numbers may vary, but the consequences are just as severe.

• Loss of revenue: Transactions cannot go through
• Brand damage: Customers start to lose trust
• Data loss: Especially damaging if you are subject to data protection regulations like Zimbabwe’s Cyber and Data Protection Act (2021) or South Africa’s POPIA
• Customer churn: No one likes a vendor that disappears mid-transaction
• Operational paralysis: Employees cannot work without access to tools or data

Even a small outage can ripple across departments, suppliers, and customers. And if you do not recover quickly, it becomes a long-term reputation problem.

“It Won’t Happen to Us” — The Most Dangerous Lie in Business

Many businesses, especially smaller ones, think they are too niche, too low-profile, or too local to be targets. But the data paints a different story.

• 46 percent of cyberattacks globally target small to medium enterprises (Verizon DBIR, 2024)
• The rise of ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) makes it easier than ever for criminals to target unprepared organisations

The truth is this: Every business is a target. Every business is vulnerable. Only those with solid DR plans are resilient.

Key Components of a Disaster Recovery Plan

You do not need a PhD in IT to understand DR, but you do need a comprehensive, testable, and tailored plan. At Centric Data, we help clients design DR systems based on four core components:

1. Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Start by identifying the disasters you are most vulnerable to:

• Power outages
• Internet downtime
• Natural disasters
• Cybercrime

Then ask: What happens to our business if this system goes down? How long can we afford to be offline before real damage begins? This helps you rank your risks and identify critical systems and data that need the fastest recovery.

2. Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)

• RTO is how fast you need a system back online
• RPO is how much data you can afford to lose (measured in time)

For example, if your RPO is 15 minutes, your backups need to run at least that frequently. High-frequency backups result in a lower RPO.

3. Data Backup Strategy

This is the foundation of disaster recovery. You need:

• Regular automated backups
• Off-site or cloud storage
• Encryption at rest and in transit
• Versioning so you can roll back to clean states

We often recommend a 3-2-1 backup strategy:

• 3 copies of your data
• 2 different storage media
• 1 copy stored off-site (preferably in the cloud)

4. Disaster Recovery Infrastructure

Depending on your budget and needs, this could include:

• Hot sites (fully operational replicas that activate instantly)
• Warm sites (pre-configured backups that take a few hours to activate)
• Cold sites (basic infrastructure ready to install your backups)

You can also leverage Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) platforms like Veeam, Acronis, or Azure Site Recovery, all of which Centric Data supports.

Testing: The Make-or-Break Step

It is not enough to have a disaster recovery plan. You need to test it.

• Conduct quarterly or semi-annual DR drills
• Simulate ransomware, data deletion, or power failures
• Measure your RTO and RPO against your actual response

In 2022, Centric Data helped a regional logistics company recover from a crypto-ransomware attack in under 3 hours, only because their DR system had been tested just two months prior.

If you cannot execute your DR plan under pressure, it might as well not exist.

Cloud, Hybrid, or On-Prem: What Works Best?

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. But here is a basic guide:

• Cloud-native businesses benefit from cloud DR tools such as AWS Backup or Google Cloud Disaster Recovery
• Hybrid businesses (common in Southern Africa) should build hybrid DR systems with on-prem backups and cloud failover
• On-prem-heavy organisations need strong off-site replication and backup strategies

At Centric Data, we usually recommend a hybrid-first strategy. Fast on-prem recovery with secure cloud-based redundancy.

Cybersecurity and DR Go Hand in Hand

You cannot talk about DR without mentioning cybersecurity. After all, 90 percent of disasters today are digitally driven (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, 2024). That includes:

• Ransomware
• Insider threats
• Supply chain attacks

Your disaster recovery strategy must include:

• Immutable backups
• Endpoint protection
• Zero Trust principles
• Role-based access controls

DR is your last line of defence. But it should not be your only one.

Legal and Compliance Considerations

Data loss can get you into legal trouble. Under Zimbabwe’s Cyber and Data Protection Act and similar laws across the continent, companies are expected to safeguard user data and report breaches promptly.

Failure to restore systems or notify regulators can lead to:

• Fines
• Revocation of licenses
• Public scrutiny

A documented DR plan and an audit trail of tests demonstrate due diligence and can reduce liability.

Where to Start: The DR Kickstart Checklist

If you do not have a DR plan yet, here is a simple checklist to get started:

• Identify your business-critical systems
• Determine your RTO and RPO for each
• Set up regular, automated backups
• Choose a backup and DR solution (on-prem, cloud, or hybrid)
• Assign DR roles and responsibilities
• Draft the recovery playbook
• Test and iterate quarterly
• Document everything

Need help? That is where we come in.

How Centric Data Can Help

At Centric Data, we specialise in resilient IT infrastructure and disaster recovery for SMEs and enterprises across Africa. Our services include:

• DR consulting and risk assessment
• Backup and replication setup
• DRaaS configuration and management
• DR testing and compliance reporting
• On-prem to cloud migration

We do not just set it up and walk away. We test, monitor, and adapt as your business evolves.

Final Thoughts: Do Not Wait for a Wake-Up Call

Disasters do not announce themselves. They do not wait for a quiet quarter. But the businesses that bounce back are the ones that planned ahead, backed up often, and tested rigorously.

Think of disaster recovery as a seatbelt for your business. You hope you will never need it, but when the crash comes, it is the only thing keeping you alive.

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Design-Nation Publishes ’20 Makers, 20 Objects’

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Want to know the one thing that every successful digital marketer does first to ensure they get the biggest return on their marketing budget? It’s simple: goal-setting. This is an absolutely essential practice for any digital marketer who knows how to execute their campaigns in a productive, cost-effective way. With a few. With a few simple tips, you can be doing the same in no time! In this blog, we’ll walk you through the first steps every savvy digital marketer takes to ensure that they’re on target to hit all their marketing objectives. Get ready for revenue! 

Remember: even if the channel you’re considering is all the rage right now, it might not fit your brand. Always make informed decisions that directly relate to your company. Otherwise, your message won’t be delivered to its intended audience and you’ll have wasted time, effort and money.

Know Your Goals

The first step is clearly identifying which goals you want to achieve. Get specific. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Are you all about locking in leads? Do you want to establish a strong network of influencers that can help you be discovered? How about pushing engagement on social media?

Get Specific

A useful tool for narrowing down your goals to ensure they’re viable is the SMART mnemonic. It’s important to get specific to understand exactly what you’re working towards, and help you break down the process of hitting your targets. This is exactly what this mnemonic helps you to achieve.

• Does the channel reach my intended audience?
• Is the channel sustainable and affordable within my company’s marketing budget?
• Will I be able to measure the success of the channel?
• Does the channel allow me to express my brand’s intended message?
• Do the channels I’m considering work together to convey my message?

Always Remember Your Goals!

Establishing a solid vision for your business is the first step to planning your digital marketing budget. Always keep your final goals in sight when organising anything for your company. When deciding which steps to take next in your business, ask yourself how they will help you achieve the goals you outlined in Step #1. This will ensure that you stay on track and prevent you from spending your budget on anything that won’t help you achieve.

Cum et essent similique. Inani propriae menandri sed in. Pericula expetendis has no,
quo populo forensibus contentiones et, nibh error in per.

Denis Robinson

As your budget progresses and evolves, continue referring to your SMART objectives. Stay focused and remember your goals – they will always inform what your next step will be!