How to sell data recovery to your clients?

Your clients need a data recovery solution, but many of them do not know it or if they do, they do not think data recovery is important. Here are some disturbing statistics that are proof to this point.  

• 43% of small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have no cybersecurity plan in place.
• 33% of companies with 50 or fewer employees report using free, consumer-grade cybersecurity.
• 20% of companies use no endpoint security whatsoever. 

Today, you are providing a backup service to your clients but that will not help them in the event of an unforeseen event, such as an outage, disaster, or data breach. What your clients need is a data recovery service, which can provide you with an opportunity to increase your revenues and build a stronger partnership with your clients. Read on to discover how you can educate your client on the importance of data recovery.  

First, walk your client through a few scenarios about how data is lost and how long it would take them to recover if:

• A disgruntled employee deleted the company’s customer database along with the local backup.  
• A fire destroyed one of their offices and all was completely lost, including their systems and on-site tape backups.
• A user unknowingly clicked on a link attached to an email and a message appeared on the screen demanding payment of $10,000 for the data. 

These are just a few of the ways that data can be lost but there are at least nine ways that result in data loss:

• Human-made and natural disasters
• Malware and virus infections
• Human error
• Insider threats
• Malfunctioning hardware
• Software corruption
• Loss or theft of a device
• Accidents such as spills, dropping a laptop, etc.
• Power failures

That is a lot of ways to lose data! What are the chances that one of these events will happen to your client over the next month? Here are some statistics that answer that question.

• 18.5% of SMB owners have suffered from a cyberattack or data breach within the past year. 
• Between October 2018 through October 2019, 63% of SMB organizations experienced an incident involving the loss or theft of sensitive information about customers, target customers or employees.
• In 2019, 28% of breaches involved Small Business Victims.
• 71% of ransomware attacks targeted small businesses in 2018.

The answer to this question has coined the expression: when it comes to data loss, it is not a question of if it will happen, but rather when it will happen.

There are countless statistics on what data loss can cost but the loss is dependent on the size of the organization, the industry, its location, and the reason for the data loss. Here are just a few data statistics that are eye openers.

• The global average cost of a global breach in 2020 was USD $3.86 million or $141.00 per data record.
• Small instances of data loss (approximately 100 lost or compromised records) can cost a business an average of  USD $18,120 to $35,730, depending upon the size of the company and the value of the data. 
• To deal with the consequences of an insider incident, an organization with headcount less than 500 spent an average of USD $7.68 million.
• One hour of downtime can cost an SMB as much as USD $8,600.

It is important that your client understands that data loss can cost their business a lot of money in lost productivity, revenue loss, the cost to replace records, compliance costs, and brand damage. If the loss is the result of a breach, they might incur costs for investigative/forensic activities and the expenses associated with notifying customers and regulatory agencies.

This past year, 2020, saw an explosive growth when it came to the amount of data lost in cyberattacks, the number of cyberattacks, and the sophistication of the attacks. For example, one study states that compared to 2019, 2020 saw a triple-digit increase across all malware types: 

• Malware increased by 358% overall and ransomware increased by 435% in 2020.
• Distribution of Emotet malware skyrocketed in 2020 by 4,000%. 
• Malware threats attacking Android phones increased by 263%. 
• The month of July 2020 had the largest increase in malicious activity by 653% compared with the previous year. 
•  Microsoft Office documents were the most manipulated document attack vector and went up by 112%. 

And the statistics demonstrating an increasing number of cyberattacks goes on:

• More than 90% of all healthcare organizations reported at least one security breach in the last three years.
• The U.S. Federal Trade Commission received 1.4 million reports of identity theft last year, double the number from 2019. 
• Industrial Control Systems (ICS) security threats grew threefold in 2020.

Obviously, cybercrime is a profitable business and with technology making attacks more sophisticated (and presumably more effective), we won’t be seeing the number of cyberattacks decreasing anytime soon.

All the more reason why your clients need a service that protects and secures their data and allows you to recover their data regardless of the event. 

While you can sell backup services to help your clients protect their data, it does nothing to prevent an event that causes the data loss in the first place. Consider offering your clients a cyber protection service, which integrates next-gen, AI-based anti-malware to detect and stop a cyberattack, backup to protect data, and disaster recovery that recovers your client’s data in the event an unforeseen event causes data loss. Every business needs disaster recovery, so this offers you an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new market opportunity.

In addition to offering a data recovery service, you can create additional revenue streams by offering other data recovery-related services, including employee disaster preparation, recovery procedures documentation, assessments, design, workflow process mapping, management, testing, reporting, and audit support.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud includes best-of-breed backup, next-gen AI-based anti-malware, and protection management in a one-of-a-kind cyber protection solution. Included at no cost or on a pay-as-you-go basis, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud lets you build services with little to no upfront cost, ensuring 100% coverage of clients' workloads with cyber protection.

You can also expand your service portfolio to meet your client requirements with advanced protection packs that extend their capabilities. By adding advanced protection packs such as Advanced Backup, Advanced Security, Advanced Disaster Recovery, and Advanced Management onto Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, you can expand and customize your services to deliver the optimum level of cyber protection for each client and every workload.

Installed with one agent and managed through one console, the centralized management of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud ensures you can fully protect your clients’ systems and data without having to juggle multiple solutions. A single pane of glass provides the visibility and control needed to deliver comprehensive cyber protection – from creating local and cloud-based backups to stopping zero-day malware attacks with advanced AI-based anti-malware and antivirus defenses.