E-Business
Developing a Disaster Recovery Plan for Small Businesses
Businesses need to plan for when disaster strikes. Whether it’s a fire, a major flood, or a cyberattack, there’s always a chance that something could happen that disrupts their operations.
This is particularly important for small businesses. Available data suggest that between 40% and 60% of SMEs without a set response plan for a major disaster will shut down permanently when that disaster happens.
Organizations that want to recover quickly from these events should have a Disaster Recovery plan in place. Such a plan enables them to cope, and bounce back within the shortest possible time.
What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is a document that’s created by an organization, detailing the steps it will take to ensure that it quickly resumes work in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.
The principal aim of such a plan is to ensure the recovery or continuity of vital organizational infrastructure, including IT systems. Unless these resources are brought back to functionality, the affected business will struggle—and fail –to run normally and serve its customers.
A critical part of the Disaster Recovery process is safeguarding or replicating data that may otherwise be lost when a disaster strikes. In the past, this involved a lot of physical work, from recalling data stored in hard drives to setting up IT infrastructure in a physical location, getting support staff to conduct maintenance, and engaging security to protect the facility.
These steps are costly and time-consuming. But today, businesses can bypass these processes by leveraging cloud Disaster Recovery.
Cloud Disaster Recovery: The Basics
Cloud Disaster Recovery works because it involves recalling and using data and applications that have been backed up in the cloud.
If the cloud is supported by infrastructure located on a different site from where the disaster struck, it will enable the organization involved to resume its workloads within a few hours or even minutes of the disruption occurring.
There are three approaches to cloud Disaster Recovery (DR): cold DR, warm DR, and hot DR.
Cold DR is the simplest of the three approaches—it just involves storing data or virtual machine (VM) images. But its recovery process is the most time-consuming of the lot, as users will have to download the stored data when a disruption happens—a process that may take a long while to complete.
In Warm DR, data and applications are duplicated, and these duplicates are stored with a cloud DR provider. They are also updated to conform to the originals. When a disruption happens, they can be accessed from the DR provider on a virtual machine (VM). This may take just a short while, but there’s still some downtime experienced.
In Hot DR, both the primary data and the DR site are running simultaneously. When there’s a disruption to the former, the latter remains active, and work can continue on it without any downtimes. This provides the quickest resolutions of the three alternatives, but it’s also the most expensive of them.
Besides the time savings that come with cloud DR, there’s also the benefit of backing up data in multiple locations, the ease with which cloud DR can be implemented, and the fact that it’s scalable.
Creating a Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan: The First Steps
Although cloud-based Disaster Recovery planning is often thought of as the preserve of large companies, small businesses are apt to develop a DR plan that will work for them. As has already been noted, it will protect them from a lot of losses, and strengthen their push for business continuity.
The first step to take in creating a Disaster Recovery Plan is to assess existing IT infrastructure. Things to note include their specifications, quantities, how much each asset is worth, and where they are stored. It’s also important to note possible risks to them, whether this is prolonged power outages, natural disasters, or cyberattacks.
Next, businesses will want to analyze the possible impact that a disaster could have on their operations. Two things have to be considered here.
First, the Recovery Time Objective (RTO), which is the upper time limit for when operations have to be restarted or else the business would begin to be negatively affected. There’s also the Recovery Point Objective (RPO), which is the maximum amount of time a business can bear data loss due to a crisis.
The smaller the RTO and RPO are, the more significant the effects of a disaster on the business tend to be.
After ascertaining what the RTO and RPO are, the business may proceed to create a DR plan based on them. For example, if these indices are much shorter, the organization in question can plan around having a Hot DR approach. But if these indices are longer, they could settle for a warm DR or even a cold DR.
Getting Expert Help: Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
Often, a Disaster Recovery plan will have to include working with a vendor that provides Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). They could help with the next stages of the cloud DR plan, including building cloud DR infrastructure and putting the Disaster Recovery plan on paper.
A good deal of the planning process remains the responsibility of small businesses. For example, they will have to test their plan often to ensure that it works well. This may be done quarterly.
Yet, DRaaS providers play a key role. Working along with these vendors, smaller organizations can design a plan that’s suited for them, and their plan with minimal hiccups.
When choosing a DRaaS partner, SMEs will want to go for one that’s reliable, provides service that scores high on usability and scalability, and makes setup and recovery as easy as possible. These factors are crucial for making DR plans a success.
Layer3Cloud takes care of these concerns with its DRaaS offering. Its product guarantees the restoration of service within minutes, the limitation of outages, and the security of virtual operating environments. It’s flexible and scalable and assures users of significant geo-redundancy.
Let’s help you protect your business’s IT assets from disaster. Get in touch with our consultants here.
By Nancy Werteen
When you get anti-hacking advice, you’ve probably heard “Don’t use a simple password,” or “Don’t plug in that USB you found on the ground.”
But there’s one form of hacking that doesn’t always require a computer, and it costs businesses about 4.88 million dollars a year.
Modern hackers aren’t trying to get into your computer; they’re trying to get into you.
“They’ll try to learn about you a little bit, and they’ll try to use that information against you to try to get you to complete some action, maybe to send somebody some money,” said Kevin Moran, PhD, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Cyber Security and Privacy Cluster, University of Central Florida.
IBM calls this human hacking, because it exploits human error instead of system error.
“With people just being busy and maybe not very carefully checking some of the emails or the phone calls that they get, can be something unfortunately that people can fall victim to,” said Moran.
Also known as social engineering, this often takes the form of phishing, where the hacker tries to “fish” the information out of you by impersonating family, friends, or even your bank.
There’s also baiting, where the hacker baits you with something of value. Remember the Nigerian prince scam?
That’s a famous example of baiting. There’s also pretexting, where the hacker will claim the victim has already been hacked, and that the hacker can fix it if you just send over your passwords. So, what can you do?
“Just as a rule of thumb, instead of clicking on links and emails, just go to the website yourself. And that will prevent, a lot of these types of attacks from happening,” explained Moran.
Phishing can take many forms.
Spear phishing targets people with access to confidential information, often to get access into an entire business, and whale phishing targets CEOs or political figures.
Search engine phishing is when hackers create fake websites promising services or goods you’ll never receive.
Angler phishing is when hackers create fake social media accounts impersonating famous people or companies.
Finally, vishing and smishing is phishing done through phone calls and texts respectively.
Federal government has said that it has successfully captured 59,786 inmates, representing approximately 74 percent of the total prison population into the National Identity Number (NIN) database.
This figure is based on a total of 80,879 inmates across 256 custodial centres across the country.
Abubakar Umar, spokesman, Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), Deputy Controller of Corrections, who made this disclosure in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja, dismissed recent media reports alleging that the NIN registration had yet to begin in custodial centres.
Umar described such report as misleading, inaccurate, and not representative of the current situation.
According to Umar, the NIN registration exercise within the correctional facilities was ongoing and has achieved substantial progress.
He credited the achievement to collaboration between the NCoS and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), which has enabled successful enrollment of majority of inmates into the national identity database.
According to him, “As of June 7, 2025, a total of 59,786 inmates, roughly 74 percent cent of the total inmate population have been captured on the NIMC platform,” Umar said.
“Efforts are ongoing to register the remaining inmates, and necessary mechanisms have been established to ensure the seamless completion of the process.”
He emphasised that the assertion that NIN registration has not started in custodial centres was factually incorrect and overlooks the extensive work already carried out.
The Service reaffirmed its commitment to integrating all inmates into national data systems, including NIN registration, as part of broader efforts to support rehabilitation, reintegration, and digital inclusion for individuals in custody.
Umar also urged media outlets to confirm their information with appropriate authorities before publication to prevent the spread of misinformation that could undermine the Service’s progress and public understanding.
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has clarified that all its verification service platforms remain fully functional and accessible to all authorized partners, including security agencies.
Abisoye Coker-Odusote, DG, NIMC
In a statement on Thursday, the Commission firmly denied claims that it had denied the Police Service Commission (PSC) access to its verification server.
Dr. Kayode Adegoke, head of Corporate Communications, NIMC, described the reported “inability of the Police Service Commission to access the NIMC verification server” as misleading and inaccurate.
He suggested that any challenges faced by the PSC may be due to internal issues within the commission itself, not from NIMC’s end.
The statement reads: “To set the record straight, the NIMC granted verification access to all Nigerian Police formations for the verification of the National Identification Number (NIN). The NPF, PSC and other security agencies have been enjoying uninterrupted verification services for over five years.
“NIMC has provided top-notch verification services for recruitment into the Nigeria Police Force, as conducted by the PSC and at no time have there been any complaints or issues regarding NIN Verification by the NPF or PSC.
“The Commission has a robust and harmonious working relationship with the Nigerian Police Force and the Police Service Commission. The Information Communications and Technology (ICT) department of the Nigeria Police Force is actively managing the long-standing verification and integration service between the NIMC and all Nigeria Police formations.Entertainment tourism packages
“NIMC will continue to provide flawless verification services for the purpose of recruitment, security mapping, cybercrime control, and any other security matters.
“The framework by which NIMC provides services to the security agencies was recently restructured for standardization and effective implementation, following consultation with the Office of the National Security Adviser, and NPF has confirmed the verification services have continued to be available. We therefore believe that any service interruption experienced by PSC may be due to internal matters.
“NIMC is committed to providing excellent verification services to the PSC, NPF and all its partners but the terms and conditions inherent must be adhered to for uninterrupted flow of service.”
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