Every business owner knows that having a business continuity plan is crucial to the success of their organization. However, when the unexpected does happen, companies tend to overlook how well employees can stick to the plan. To make sure your plan doesn’t go up in flames, here are five critical mistakes you must avoid.

The modern business uses data in almost every aspect of its operations. Without immediate and constant access to it, a business will come to a grinding halt. What’s more, in the event of a disaster, it risks losing valuable data if it doesn’t have a backup strategy in place.

Staggering amounts of information is generated every day and many businesses would struggle to operate without their databases. In fact, experts agree that by 2020, there will be 1,700 gigabytes of data generated per person on the planet. If you’re a business that’s worried about protecting its data, analytics tools are a great place to start.

There’s no telling when natural disasters will occur. When they do, certain regions in the country often bear the brunt of their impact, like when Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit certain states in 2017. With a well-designed disaster recovery (DR) plan, your business can be spared from total devastation.

Ransomware like CryptoLocker and WannaCry has become more sophisticated over the years. No wonder that more ransomware attacks are expected this year. To fend off these threats, turn to virtualized disaster recovery (DR) solutions. They’re your best defense against ransomware.

In talking about disaster recovery plans (DPR), it’s best to illustrate with real-world scenarios to help you understand things better. They offer concrete examples of successes and failures, and you can learn a lot from them. Here’s an example of a DPR audit and the lessons it offers.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony systems are great for today’s businesses. They’re more mobile with greater functionality and better cost efficiency versus traditional landline phones. But as with any technology, VoIP is vulnerable to disruptions due to equipment failure, disasters, and cyberattacks.

Almost every modern mobile device allows you to send and receive emails, download and upload media files, store data, and even close business deals. As mobile devices have become indispensable in everyone’s personal and professional life, the security risks have also increased — and backing them up has become more critical than ever.

Disaster recovery (DR) isn’t what it used to be. Long gone are the days when a DR solution cost over a hundred thousand dollars and relied predominantly on tape backups. Cloud computing has dramatically changed the DR landscape. Unfortunately, there are still many misconceptions about DR. Here are a few of the myths that no longer apply.

Just because your IT provider has a plethora of awards and certifications under its belt doesn’t mean that you can blindly hand over your business’s future to them. Often times, there are some aspects in your business continuity plan that tend to be overlooked by your provider.