What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
As our lives and businesses become reliant on technology, there is a growing threat of IT disasters impacting people's lives. To combat this, it’s important for companies to have a disaster recovery plan. When creating a plan there are some things you need to know.
More than ever technology is integrated into everything we do. As a business you probably rely on technology and data to operate, make decisions, and serve customers. This can be a very helpful thing but also leaves you vulnerable when there are system failures or unforeseen disasters. So, if there is a disaster it will greatly affect your business operations and customers. To mitigate this risk a company should implement a disaster recovery plan.
Disaster recovery plans (DRP) are an important part of business continuity planning, ensuring companies can quickly recover and resume operations after a disruptive event. A DRP involves a set of policies, tools, and procedures that guide the recovery or continuation of vital technology infrastructure. It can include everything from data backups to failover systems and cloud solutions that ensure minimal disruption to business operations. The objectives of a Disaster Recovery Plan include:
- Minimizing downtime
- Protecting data
- Ensuring business continuity
- Mitigating cybersecurity threats
Since implementing a DRP can affect a company’s bottom line, you’ll want to know the benefits of having one. The top reasons for having a DRP include:
- Minimize financial losses
- Avoid reputation damage
- Avoid legal penalties for non-compliance
- Minimize operational disruption
Key Elements of a DRP include
Risk assessment
When creating a DRP, it is important to assess the risks of a disaster and the risk of implementing a plan. Any potential threats or vulnerabilities in your systems should be assessed and you need to consider the likelihood of a disaster, and the impact it could have on your organization. Factors such as the cost of implementing and maintaining this plan and any backup systems should also be considered.
Business impact analysis
To really understand the importance and scope of a DRP it is important to consider how a disaster could impact your operations and what could be lost. It is good to know what systems and parts of your operation can be affected in the case of different disasters, along with what is essential to restore first.
Data backup and recovery
An essential part of any DRP is having a system for backing up data and a plan for data and system recovery. This is vital because if you don’t have a reliable backup, in the case of a disaster there will be nothing to restore, making a DRP a lot less helpful.
Establish recovery objectives
Before a disaster ever occurs, you need to determine what resources and applications are most important to running your organization. These should be the focus of your plan and ensure they can be backed up and easily restored. Along with this you should set a recovery time objective that outlines how long your resources can be down.
Communication plan
A communication plan is important so that there is a standard and predetermined communication method in the case of a disaster. This includes things such as alerting employees and clients/stakeholders to the issue, what is being done or needs to be done, and updates on the situation.
Testing/training
Testing your plan is critical to ensure that it is reliable. This should be done after ensuring employees and essential personnel know what the plan is and have been trained in when and how to implement it. To test your plan, firstly you can go through basic tests like running through a checklist with all the steps and doing a mock walkthrough of the process. For testing of more robust plans, you can simulate an incident, set up your recovery system, and even temporarily set them up to take over all business operations.
Revisiting/continuous improvement
As important as having a DRP is, it is equally important to continuously maintain and improve it. Disaster Recovery Plans should be frequently reviewed and tested. From this, improvements should be made based on new technologies and updated business operation along with analyzing new potential threats.
Although all these DRP elements are important, having all of them can take more financial and personnel resources than your company may have. However, even having a partial DRP is better than nothing. So, if you can’t implement all these elements, implement as many as you can and you’ll still add value to your organization.
If you have any questions about disaster recovery, please don’t hesitate to contact Dunham Connect, and we can help you put together a plan that meets your requirements and your budget.
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