We don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but your business network and accessible data can be wiped out in a moment’s notice. Unpredictable occurrences are frequent in all aspects of life, but preventative measures such as disaster recovery plans are here to help reduce the impact of IT emergencies.
From large hurricanes and other natural disasters to cyberattacks and malfunctioning hardware, businesses must evaluate these situations in order to change their mindset from “what if” to “when”. A solidified business continuity and DR plan can dramatically reduce stress, ensure limited to no downtime, and save revenue long-term.
From a 30,000-foot view, protecting your organization from different types of disasters can seem stressful. So, let’s take a closer look into the 5 topics every successful IT disaster recovery plan covers.
1. Evaluate Any and All Threats to Your Business
For a disaster recovery plan to be as successful as possible, any and all interferences that jeopardize data security should be included. This will help give you a clear understanding of every possible vulnerability. Work through this process efficiently by prioritizing anticipated disasters based on likelihood. For example, Floridians should prioritize a recovery plan for hurricanes rather than tornadoes.
After you’ve managed to analyze all potential threats it’s time to devise recovery plans for each situation. This will definitely take some time, but this is a fraction of how much time it would cost your business if a plan were not created at all.
Professional help is advised in this step so that you can rest assured knowing that any IT vulnerability has been considered and planned accordingly.
2. Develop a BIA (Business Impact Analysis)
As mentioned previously, prioritizing disaster recovery plans based on likelihood is crucial. A BIA (business impact analysis) can help take that prioritization to another level.
The overall goal of a BIA is to evaluate the effects of a potential IT disaster. Unfortunately, the outcome of natural or human-made emergencies reaches far beyond your IT department. This includes compliance, financial, overall safety, and credibility effects. It goes without saying that all of those outcomes can make a disaster exponentially worse.
This aspect of the DR and business continuity plan formalizes strategies into an actual plan. To make sure your plan is airtight, it’s recommended to reach out to IT professionals to audit and analyze your current strategy. In times of emergency, its vital to your business that key operations like data transfers/transitions are executed effectively and efficiently.
3. Staying Current
Have you adopted a new technology or made changes to your internal system since designing your disaster recovery plan? If so, your DR plan is now out-of-date. Unfortunately, your plan is incomplete until it encapsulates all aspects of your business.
As technology continues to rapidly evolve, these advancements are new variables that your DR plan must account for. Has your business made a recent transition to cloud computing? Is your business operating on a new network? These types of innovations call for updated plans.
Uptime, resilience, and DR have become the major focus points in recent tech advancements making it much more feasible for business owners/managers to afford business continuity solutions. For instance, cloud computing allows businesses to securely handle data backups/redundancy at an affordable rate.
4. Going Beyond the IT Department
We’ve briefly covered that disaster recovery extends well past the IT department, but this is topic is one that deserves more detail. When emergencies occur, it’s crucial that everyone understands their role. This includes employees from other departments as well as customers/clients.
The goal of this topic is to ensure that the focus of business continuity isn’t centered strictly around technology. The people involved in these processes can either “make or break” the situation. Some questions that businesses should consider:
- Whose main priority is it to work during the emergency?
- Who is in charge of ensuring data managers successfully transferred your information?
- Who is in charge of handling client relationships and maintaining your reputation?
This topic could definitely benefit from professional expertise. Experienced IT managers understand the importance of teamwork in times of emergency and can help craft a strategy to delegate tasks to specific employees.
5. Practice Makes Perfect
Finding that your disaster recovery plan had flaws in its strategy post-crisis is something that no business should experience. Many professionals will state that just having a business continuity plan in place doesn’t guarantee 100% effectiveness.
Since your mind isn’t constantly focused around
Proactive > Reactive
Don’t put disaster recovery on the back-burner. Data breaches and natural emergencies are nearly unavoidable but having a solid strategy for when it happens can save you from more than just a headache. Having a well thought out strategy that’s frequently tested can ultimately reduce stress, ensure limited to no downtime, maintain a sense of control, as well as save revenue long-term.
TLDR; A well-designed DR plan protects your business from life’s unpredictable occurrences. The following topics can reduce stress, limit downtime, maintain control, and save money:
- Evaluating All Threats
- Developing a BIA
- Staying Up-to-Date
- Thinking Beyond the IT Dept.
- Practice. Practice. Practice.
For more information or to learn how to craft a successful business continuity plan, head on over to CNIweb.net and speak with one of our tech experts.