Every business should have an IT disaster recovery plan. Few organizations manage large data volumes every day. Ideally, this data will be stored under advanced security-heavy access control. In the event of hardware failure, human error, hacking, malware, or natural disasters could result in data loss or corruption.
Here are some tips for an organization’s IT disaster recovery plan:
Conduct a Risk Assessment
Developing an IT disaster recovery plan requires risk assessment and business impact analysis. This will identify potential risks, vulnerabilities, and threats to an organization’s IT structure. It’s also a chance to assess the potential impact of these disruptions on critical business processes, systems, and data.
Assign IT Disaster Recovery Responsibilities
Ensure you have a team or person in charge of IT disaster recovery. If you don’t already have someone internally who knows disaster recovery, consider hiring an IT support company. They are experts in disaster recovery and can help formulate and execute a disaster recovery plan should such a need arise.
Define a Recovery Time
Have a list of what to do in an IT disaster and a recovery timeframe locked in. This is your ‘recovery time objective,’ or RTO. Your time should be dedicated to the business impact analysis or testing you do to see how much downtime is required to relaunch your IT environment.
Identify Your Recovery Point
In addition to RTO, there is an ‘RPO’ or recovery point objective, which refers to the maximum acceptable data loss. Knowing this is crucial to implementing the necessary resources and technologies to ensure a successful recovery.
Set Up Reliable Cloud Storage
Have a reliable way to store your data. Cloud storage services often come with disaster recovery setups. If an issue on the client side causes loss or corruption, you may still have your data on the server side.
Explore All Potential Recovery Strategies
Besides cloud-based solutions, you also have hot and cold sites that may be a strategy worth investigating. Hot sites are fully equipped facilities that allow immediate failover during disasters. A cold site is essential only for infrastructure but requires time for equipment setup and data restoration. We’ll weigh the right path for you depending on your budget, recovery objectives, and how critical your systems are to your business.
Compile Your Inventory
Write a full list of your hardware, including servers, desktops, laptops, and wireless devices. Create a parallel list for software applications. Lastly, keep a third list of data storage options in mind. You want to include these areas in your IT disaster recovery plan. All critical information should be backed up from these sources.
Other System Components to Consider
Recovery strategies may have to contend with other losses. There may be peripheral devices that require reset. Connectivity to the service provider-whether fibre, cable, or wireless—may be affected.
Identify the Order of Recovery
You may be unable to move from hardware to software and then to data if time-sensitive business functions or processes require IT resources to run first. An IT disaster recovery plan should stipulate what IT resources must be restored first.
Copy Software Program Files
Ensure there are copies of program software you can use to reinstall software on replacement equipment. These are easy to keep on an external hard drive and have on hand if needed.
Have Communication Procedures Defined
Communication is necessary during IT disaster recovery. Stakeholders must be informed, and public relations must be managed. Define your communication channels, internal contact lists, vendor and customer lists, and more. A prompt crisis response is best and keeps stakeholders informed.
Test Your IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Test your IT disaster recovery plan. Ensure it works. Document it as part of your business continuity plan.
Ensure You Regularly Back Up Your Data
Data backups are essential in your IT disaster recovery plan. Data can be corrupted or lost at any time and may be caused by human error or IT system failure. Data backups retain your most valuable data and provide a restore point from which you can reinstall important data on systems that have been wiped or reinstalled.
Manage Data Backups for Disaster Recovery
Data backup strategies involve identifying what data to back up and how. Hardware and software backups can be scheduled and conducted periodically. After an automated backup is complete, confirm that the data backed up is accurate and the backup was performed correctly.
