Don’t Let a Tech Disaster Ruin Your Reputation

Anytime there is a major cyber security breach in the news it usually spells out disaster for all those who are involved. Weather it is the customers whose data has been breached or the company involved that has to deal with all the media, it ends up turning into a nightmare.

With some of the most infamous breaches being Target, who had over 70 million consumers credit and debit card information compromised. Or the Equifax breach recently in 2017 that could have potentially hit over 143 million Americans. These major companies take a huge hit in PR and get an overall bad stigma associated with them for a long time after.

However, not just massive corporations can deal with this reputation issue after cyber security breaches and downtime. Small businesses that are down because of technical issues could suffer damages to their customer service and reputation locally.

Reputation matters!

Most of the time when you hear about disaster recovery, the focus is on getting your business up and running as fast as possible. The average small business loses as much as $8,600 per hour when its network is offline. It’s expensive to rebound slowly.

But there’s another reason to get serious about disaster recovery – your reputation. As CSO put it, “. . . a data breach is a PR and financial disaster. Companies often spot the intrusion too late, and respond inadequately . . . Customers, for one, will often vote with their feet.”

When customers feel they can’t trust a company with their financial information, other factors fall by the wayside quickly. Maybe you’re the best in your industry. Maybe you have amazing customer service. Maybe your customer base is insanely loyal the rest of the time.

But lose their trust, and you’ve lost them.

Disaster recovery and your reputation.

The very same article from CSO quoted above goes on to argue that the damage is often only temporary. After all, Target is still a viable brand. They bounced back from a massive breach, due in part to their disaster recovery plan.

When things got rough, they responded quickly.

Disaster recovery isn’t just about restoring functionality to your system. It’s also about restoring customer faith. If something happens – anything from a natural disaster to hardware failure to a security breach – you need a clear disaster recovery plan.

If you have one, you can weather the storm. Trust can be rebuilt. But only if you show your customers you know how to handle a crisis.

We are Here to Help.

Here at ECMSI, we care a great deal about disaster recovery. We understand the impact downtime has on your bottom line. We also understand the hit your reputation will take if you don’t know how to navigate a disaster. That’s why our managed services are designed to keep you proactive and ready for anything.

It’s our goal to minimize the impact to your customer base and keep your reputation untarnished, even when everything goes wrong.

If you don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place already, we highly recommend addressing that. And, of course, we’d be honored to help. Get in touch with us to find out more about how our disaster recovery strategy can protect your network stability and your reputation.