Why one-click recovery is crucial for keeping operations running

Data backup is critical, but even the most securely guarded data isn’t of much use if you can’t quickly access it after a security incident or disaster. Organizations of all kinds run on data, and without it they can’t run at all. That’s why one-click recovery is so critical.

Speed of data recovery is important for business continuity. Most backup solutions safeguard data adequately, but they do not enable organizations to recover data rapidly. After an incident, backed-up data that’s stored but inaccessible is of no real use to your organization. You need to be able to access your data quickly to get your business back up and running.

Avoiding downtime is generally the main reason why rapid data recovery is critical. The inability to operate can inflict major financial damage on any business and can be particularly harmful in manufacturing environments. Rapid recovery of systems and data is essential to organizations that simply can’t afford downtime.

Speed of IT response is another major issue for many organizations, as is the fact that not even IT can recover data in some scenarios. Outages can lead to IT bottlenecks, a problem that gets worse when IT has to appear physically on-site to perform data restoration.

A 2024 survey from analyst firm IDC revealed that the average business suffers 4.2 data-related disruptions every year. Almost a quarter of respondents reported suffering 10 or more incidents in12 months.

For manufacturers, the financial cost of lost data can add up quickly. A survey by ABB found that 69% of companies experienced unplanned downtime once per month — while almost 10% experienced an unplanned outage every day. Outages are expensive, costing a median amount of $125,000 per hour.

Those statistics make clear that speed of data recovery is essential. In fact, respondents to the IDC survey named it the most important feature they look for when evaluating a recovery solution.

Almost 30% of IDC respondents cited staff shortages as one of the biggest challenges in implementing recovery. So, businesses of all kinds need a solution that provides rapid recovery without requiring on-site IT staff or remote IT access.  

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Speed and ease of data recovery can be the difference between significant financial losses and a relatively simple and inexpensive recovery. Many backup and recovery tools do a fine job of keeping data safe, but they can’t necessarily make it quickly available after an incident.

That can create major problems in several common scenarios:

If a multisite business suffers data loss, recovery can often require a machine-by-machine process that involves a prohibitive level of manual intervention. In some cases, an IT professional needs to physically go from one machine to the next to restore data. The result is a recovery process that is expensive and excruciatingly long and difficult.

The idea here is similar. Workers can be located just about anywhere in a remote environment. If an organization suffers data loss, the lack of a simple and rapid recovery process can wreak havoc. Employees might need to physically deliver their devices to IT professionals, who would need to spend a gigantic amount of time implementing recovery processes computer by computer.

There are few scenarios more daunting for manufacturers than operational technology (OT) systems experiencing extended downtime. In many cases, manufacturers air gap production facilities, isolating local computing resources from any external networks. Recovery from an OT failure can be difficult in an air-gapped environment because IT can’t connect into the environment remotely with remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools. Recovery requires a time-consuming dispatch of an IT professional to the site, which can be difficult and, in some cases, dangerous. Failures can actually put the lives of workers in danger. Non-IT workers in air-gapped environments need to be able to recover data on their own, but with most data-recovery tools, the recovery process is too complex for a nonexpert.

There are two common threads that run through data-loss scenarios in just about any environment. One-click recovery enables virtually any employee in an organization to resolve them and saves the organization from potentially catastrophic losses of time and money.

With the ability to restore data with just one click, organizations can:

• Minimize downtime. The difference between minutes of downtime and hours or more is massive. The numbers add up quickly. At a median cost of $125,000 per hour, a few minutes of downtime cost very little. Just three hours of downtime, on the other hand, costs $375,000. A workday, eight hours, costs $1 million. A week of downtime, then — not necessarily unusual in air-gapped environments — costs $5 million. The difference between rapid and slow data recovery can easily make a dent in a balance sheet.

• Enable non-IT professionals to restore data. This ability goes hand in hand with minimizing downtime. In air-gapped environments, IT professionals generally aren’t available. In many cases, such as offshore oil rigs, the environments themselves are inaccessible. But even in more traditional settings, waiting for IT to recover data costs money. And it can cause a bottleneck with service requests as IT professionals struggle to restore machines in person or receive them in the mail to perform data recovery. With one-click recovery, anybody can restore data in an instant with no IT expertise required. The capability empowers employees of all backgrounds to get their operations up and running again and empowers IT to focus on other priorities. The savings in time and money can be colossal.

Acronis Cyber Protect offers one-click recovery that is unique among backup and recovery solutions. The one-click capability enables fast and reliable recovery for entire systems with one click, including bare-metal recovery to dissimilar hardware. A single non-IT user can recover data and make it accessible again for an entire organization with a single click.

Instead of sending an IT professional to every user in a retail organization, for instance, an associate in the store can recover the business’s data with one click. A hospital employee can bring back an entire health care organization’s data with a click. Or an employee working at home can recover data for an entire organization with a single keystroke or touch of the mouse.

One-click recovery is particularly essential in OT environments. The one-click feature in Acronis Cyber Protect for Operational Technology enables local non-IT staff  to restore OT systems quickly and easily. Manufacturers can reduce downtime and associated costs and get production systems back up and running quickly after an incident even in remote and / or air-gapped environments where help by skilled IT resources is hours away.

The potential for incidents in all kinds of organizations is growing, not shrinking. Cyberattacks are generally becoming more, not less, dangerous and frequent. Natural disasters, hardware failures, software glitches and human errors can lead to data loss and downtime at any moment. Backing up data is important. Being able to restore it almost instantly and without IT intervention is essential. Acronis One-Click Recovery provides organizations peace of mind and confidence to operate without risking prolonged downtime.