Sofia Spatola
Posted by Computer Solutions on July 28, 2025
Power outages, ransomware attacks, hardware failures, and natural disasters don’t send advance notice. Yet every week, some business somewhere is caught off guard. For veterinary practices, where daily operations depend on software, secure networks, and reliable communication, even a short disruption can ripple out into missed appointments, lost revenue, and frustrated clients.
Many clinics assume that having backups is enough. But the reality is more complex. A file backup helps you recover data. It doesn’t help you continue operations when your internet is down, your building is inaccessible, or your staff is stuck working remotely without the right tools.
That’s why backups alone aren’t enough. What you need is a full veterinary business continuity plan—one that keeps your practice running through unexpected disruption.
What Business Continuity Actually Means
Let’s be clear. Backups are essential. But they’re just one component of a much larger system. A business continuity plan is a structured, proactive approach to ensuring your clinic can continue to operate during and after a crisis.
When your practice management system goes offline, or your local network fails, it’s not enough to know your data is safe. You also need to know:
- How quickly can your systems be restored?
- Where can your team work if the building is inaccessible?
- Which services must stay operational to serve clients?
- Who is responsible for initiating recovery procedures?
If your IT provider can’t walk you through these answers confidently, you’re not prepared. You’re hoping for the best—and in today’s world, that’s not a strategy.
Backups vs. Business Continuity
Here’s a simple breakdown of how they differ:
- Backups let you restore data after a loss.
- Continuity ensures you can keep operating, even in the middle of a loss.
A strong veterinary business continuity plan includes elements like:
- Encrypted, off-site, and immutable backups
- Defined recovery timelines (RTO and RPO)
- Remote work access for critical systems
- Redundant infrastructure or cloud-based failover
- Regular testing of your recovery processes
Think of it this way: if your server room floods, the backup drive sitting beside it won’t do you much good. But a cloud-based recovery solution, tested and managed by your IT provider, could have you back up in hours instead of days.
This Is Not Just a Worst-Case Scenario
It’s easy to assume these situations won’t happen to your clinic. But every year, we see real examples of practices affected by unexpected downtime:
- A veterinary clinic in New Jersey lost access to its appointment and billing system for three days after a localized power surge damaged its server.
- Flooding in eastern Pennsylvania left several practices without access to on-site computers, exposing the fact that their backups hadn’t been tested in months.
- In New York, a clinic hit by ransomware was offline for over a week—and discovered their backups had been silently failing.
Disasters don’t just affect major corporations. They hit small businesses just like yours. The difference is, larger organizations often have a business continuity team on standby. Small clinics rely on their IT provider to fill that role.
The Questions You Should Be Asking Right Now
Don’t wait for a crisis to evaluate your readiness. Ask your IT provider:
- What happens if ransomware encrypts our data—how fast can we recover?
- How often are our backups tested, and which systems are included?
- If our office is physically inaccessible, can we keep serving clients remotely?
- Is our current continuity strategy aligned with industry best practices?
- How will communication with clients and staff continue during a disruption?
If the answers feel vague, overly technical, or “we’ll look into that,” your risk is higher than it needs to be.
Downtime Is Inevitable. Impact Isn’t.
You can’t stop every storm, power outage, or cyberattack. But you can plan for them. And when you do, you give your team and your clients the one thing that matters most: stability.
A good IT provider helps you recover when something goes wrong.
A great one makes sure your operations never skip a beat.
At Computer Solutions, we specialize in building real-world business continuity strategies for veterinary clinics. Whether you’re in a one-location practice or a growing multi-site operation, we’ll help ensure that a single point of failure doesn’t bring everything to a halt.
Let’s Evaluate Your Readiness
We offer a free network and continuity assessment for veterinary practices. We’ll review your current infrastructure, backup protocols, and recovery plans to see what’s working—and where you may be vulnerable.
Schedule your free veterinary business continuity assessment today and get peace of mind that your clinic can keep running, no matter what. Call 609.514.0100 or visit welinku.com.
Want to learn more about veterinary IT and cybersecurity? Check out another blog post here!
