Access to data is one of the first things a government needs following a natural disaster. Data in many forms is essential to bring back government operations, deliver emergency services and help the community rebuild.
Many governments follow solid practices for creating data backups but may not have an easy or secure way to store them offsite. In other cases, a government may have offsite storage in a nearby data center or service provider’s colocation facility. However, that backup is vulnerable to the same tornado, hurricane, earthquake or other widespread and destructive incident as the primary storage.
In addition, traditional tools and processes for data backup and recovery are often manual — making them slow, cumbersome and vulnerable to human error. This challenge expands as governments store data across multiple, diverse applications and storage systems, both on premises and in the cloud.
A carefully considered choice for offsite backup, a documented data recovery plan, and the right management tools and processes can help ensure vital informaton is available after a disaster. Yet many governments have found developing these resources daunting given the large scope of data and applications.