I was reading an article on disaster recovery the other day on one of our guest blog sites from a company that provides credit union IT Compliance support. On our blog, FLEX Connexions, we talk about DR in terms of the credit union core, which of course is an absolute. But CU's should have a Disaster Recovery Plan that reaches into the branch staff and members beyond the core.
For this reason, I thought it would be good to take a break from talking about Credit Union Core Technology, and highlight reasons why our clients need to place a better emphasis on DR as a whole. I asked enCompass if I could share some of their data from their article, "How Much Should Your CU Be Paying for Disaster Recovery," with our subscribers, as the numbers they presented were both shocking and relevant to our own clients:
"Gartner did a survey about businesses who have lost data. They found that SMB's who underwent a significant data loss had only a 6% survival rate over a two year period. In other words, 94% of businesses failed within 2 years of a significant data loss.
I have not seen any survey results for the same statistics for credit unions, but the impact of a data loss at a financial institution poses the risk of impacting a much greater number of people.
In a blog called "Ask Jack", I read the quote about Schofield’s Second Law of Computing, which states that data doesn’t really exist unless you have at least two copies of it. How true this is in today's age where disaster can range from a natural disaster, manmade disaster, or a cyber attack occurring right under our noses with no way of knowing it until it is too late.
So how much should you pay for a Disaster Recovery solutions outside your core? There really is no single answer to this question. For a loan officer on your staff, who has a laptop with some software on it and some data on it, basic backup of your data on an external hard drive may be enough. For your CEO or CIO, or anyone on your Incident Response team, however, backing up not only their data but an entire image of their workstation is critical and warrants a larger chunk of your budget.
Whatever the value you place on backup, be sure to consider the price tag you place on RECOVERY. What good is a backup solution if you do not know how to recover the data and the systems with little to no Mean Time to Repair."
What's a Small CU to Do?
I was on a LinkedIn discussion and saw a CU exec ask this question when it comes to DR and budgeting for it. FLEX works with large, mid-sized and small credit unions, and is truly a partner with them in their survival and how well they thrive in the market. Whether it's ensuring your core systems are safe in the event of a disaster, or working as a sounding board, consulting you on how to best approach your Disaster Recovery Plans, we like to think of ourselves as partners with our clients. In recent years, industry personnel ranked CMC first among competing vendors for customer satisfaction. It is a tribute which reflects not only the appreciation of our customers but also our expanding presence in the industry. Read the Testimonial from a small Connecticut FCU who appreciates and values this partnership:
