Data Loss Affects Organisations

The day-to-day running of an organization is dependent on the efficiency of their data management. As all their data is stored on computers, it is imperative that proper safeguards be adopted and installed to avert any damage, deletion or corruption of their data. Any data loss can bring a smooth running company or business to a grinding halt.

What exactly is data loss? Data loss is a situation in which there is an inability to access data involving a previously functioning computer system or backup. Any accidental erasure of data or overwriting of data leading to this sort of access failure is categorized as data loss.

Data loss can happen due to a number of reasons. Backup files may not recognize the database engine, database getting locked preventing access, deleted or dropped tables, accidentally deleted or overwritten records, all involve data loss. Data can also be deleted with criminal or malicious intent, database files corrupted and individual data pages damaged. Even natural calamities like flood, fire or earthquake can damage database leading to data loss.

The first and foremost step towards preventing data loss is to efficiently and carefully maintain a backup. To avoid major data loss, a routine data backup that creates a second copy of important data for storage in a different physical location needs to be established.

A data backup does not ensure a 100% recovery of data. In case of data loss where data backup cannot be of much help, it is important to employ other methods for data recovery. Data recovery should be done at the earliest as time saved is money saved. Timely data recovery ensures that the setback suffered by the organization is temporary in nature.

Any data loss in an organization has severs implications. Any sizable amount of vital data loss affects the business continuity. For companies data loss represents a business risk. Even if a monetary value is not assigned to the data, the negative effects on the operations can be significant:

1. Risk to Sales: Any data loss affecting communication with the customers means that the company will not realize sales and revenue. Emails have become a primary form of communication. Losing emails and attachment means the customer may not be serviced correctly. A hard drive crash can make an important delivery go unnoticed till after the sale is lost. A lot of companies rely on call centres for their customer relationship management that help them track customer issues and orders. Any data loss here represents a risk to sales, revenue and profitability.

2. Inability to Operate: Computer technology and the data associated with it are integrated into all aspects of an organisation’s operations. Because of this dependence, a company may not be able to fulfil orders, update employee records, produce financial reports, manufacture goods, provide services and so on, thus stalling their operations.

3. Reducing Productivity: Even partial data loss can harm an organization’s efficiency and productivity. Employees may sit idle for long periods while data recovery is in process, reducing productivity as a result. Also, applications may fail unexpectedly when referencing data is inaccessible. Essential reporting may be incomplete because component data is not available.

4. Disrupting Decision-making: Most modern businesses rely on financial, market and manufacturing measures. Without the ability to gather and report on key business indicators making any analysis is difficult or incorrect. This means faulty decisions may be taken depriving the company of profits.

5. Security Threat: Data losses in organizations such as banks that have online service facilities pose many security-related issues. Banks have online service facility and store a lot of sensitive information and any elimination or theft of records will be disastrous.

6. Waste of Money and Time: Data recovery process wastes time and money as normal functioning halts as the recovery work is in progress. Also, there is no 100% success rate and by the time the futility of the exercise is apparent, a lot of time and money are wasted.

7. Loss of Reputation: Many companies provide services and perform task on a daily basis. Any loss of orders or inefficiency in service gives rise to a feeling of mistrust among consumers and a loss of reputation in the market.

This makes it important for companies to have a disaster recovery plan and a data backup policy in place. These safeguards can mitigate the effects of data loss to some extent.