Reaping the Benefits of a Good Disaster Recovery Plan 

We all know that disasters are inevitable. It’s not IF, but WHEN an unexpected issue will arise. So if you are a responsible business owner, you need to have a good disaster recovery plan and disaster recovery service.

If your business goes bankrupt, or your critical data is encrypted by hackers, you don’t want to be in the middle of a disaster without a plan.

When a disaster happens, your business has to recover as quickly as possible. You want to minimize the amount of downtime. So you need to have a good recovery plan. 

In this article, I will share with you the most important parts of a good disaster management plan and why it’s important to your organization. 

But first, let’s explore what disaster recovery plans are and what they are used for:

 

What Is A Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan (DRP), or disaster management plan is a formal document that details steps your organization will take to quickly resume normal business operations after a disruption.

Disaster recovery planning is very important to be able to survive a disaster. If you have a bad plan, you will likely experience problems.

Disaster recovery plans are used to explain the actions that must be taken before, during, and after an unplanned incident such as natural disaster, hacking, or equipment failure.

Basically, anything that prevents you from running your business normally.

By having a disaster recovery plan, you can be prepared for the most common threats to small businesses – and know what to do when it happens to you!

 

What Should Be Included In A Disaster Recovery Plan?

When creating a disaster recovery plan for your business, the goal is to identify and evaluate the risks, then create a way to minimize those risks.

A good disaster recovery plan is effective in recovering critical business data and processes after disasters.

Steps that should be included in a good disaster recovery plan:

1. Identifying critical operations, functions, software, apps, and data.
2. Evaluating all potential disaster scenarios.
3. Identifying your risk and maximum allowable downtime.
4. Creating a communication plan for employees, clients, and vendors.
5. Implementing a data backup disaster recovery plan with onsite and offsite redundancy.
6. Testing and validating your response plan and data backups at LEAST once a year.

Don’t forget! Review your current insurance policy. You wouldn’t want to be faced with a disaster and not have sufficient coverage.

 

Disaster Recovery Planning Checklist Example

Risk Assessment:

• • Define all critical functions, systems, software, and data in your organization.
  • Prioritize the above items in order of importance to your business (mission critical to minor) based on which ones, if destroyed, would have the greatest negative impact on your business.
  • Create a document that outlines your current IT infrastructure (network documentation) so another IT person or company could take over easily if your current IT person wasn’t available, or could assist in the recovery of your IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster.
  • Determine the RTO (recovery time objective), RPO (recovery point objective), and MTO (maximum tolerable outage) for every critical function and system in your business.
  • Identify all threats that could potentially disrupt or destroy the above-mentioned data, systems, functions, etc., and the likelihood of those threats.

Mitigation And Planning Strategies:

• • Create an IT Assets Inventory list and identify all the functions, data, hardware, and systems in your business.
  • Identify all potential disasters and threats to these systems and functions.
  • For each mission-critical system or function, brainstorm ways to minimize, avoid or limit the damage done.
  • For the most likely disasters, create a disaster recovery plan specific to what damage could be done (tornado flattens your office, city evacuation, virus attack, etc.), and identify who will be responsible for executing the plan (your disaster recovery team).
  • Identify a recovery plan and timeline for each function, and prioritize these functions by the order in which they need to be recovered if multiple mission-critical functions were affected.
  • Create a backup strategy for your data and systems.
  • Create a testing and validation strategy, and schedule tests for your backups.
  • Define your communication plan in the event of a disaster to employees, clients, vendors, and the media.
  • Create a “break the glass” document that contains instructions on what to do if a key executive dies, is disabled, or is otherwise unavailable for a long period of time.
  • Review your current insurance policy to make sure you have sufficient coverage to replace the assets in your organization.
  • Define a media communication strategy (how you will communicate with the press if a disaster happens).
  • Summarize this into a disaster recovery plan and brief the disaster recovery team on the plan.
  • Schedule a periodic meeting to review and update the plan with your disaster recovery team.

 

Why Is A Disaster Recovery Plan Important To An Organization?

With good disaster recovery planning, you can avoid closing your doors from fire, power outages, floods, hacker attacks, active threats, hardware failure, theft, and even rogue employees.

Organizations big and small generate large amounts of data. And let’s face it, the only things that are absolutely irreplaceable in your organization are the people and the data.

Everything else can be replaced.

You can minimize losses (both in financial and reputation) to your business caused by unexpected disasters when you have a crisis management plan for disaster in advance.

Benefits Of Disaster Recovery Plans Include:

• Ensuring you can be back up and running quickly in the event of a disaster. Reliable backups get you back to work in minutes vs. hours, days, or even weeks!
• Protect and defend your employees, business, and reputation. A disaster recovery plan will help you avoid losing everything you’ve worked so hard for to a disaster or other operational nightmares.
• Prevent loss and injury. Have what you need to fully cover from damage and losses. Introducing your cybersecurity provider to your insurance provider can help ensure you are covered.
• Gain true peace of mind. Sleep easier at night knowing you have a way to continue working when disaster hits.

 

Implement A Disaster Recovery Plan For Your Business

A disaster can happen any time on any day and is likely to occur at the most inconvenient time, and according to FEMA, about 25 percent of businesses do not reopen after disasters.

Be ready for the next disaster. Protect your business BEFORE disaster strikes with disaster recovery plan solutions.

Take action now so you know your business can survive whatever comes next – even a freak snowstorm in Texas.

Looking for the quickest way to protect your business and data from disaster now? Juern Technology delivers business continuity and data backup and recovery services for businesses like yours.

Ready to learn more? Book a FREE 15-Minute Consult or give us a call at (210) 245-6900 to learn how we can help your business prepare for the next disaster.