Disasters happen. Networks go down. It happens to everyone at some stage or another. And while these events are never welcome, their ability to grow into a catastrophic occurrence lies largely in the hands of those who develop the company’s strategy for recovering from disaster once it strikes.
A sound disaster recovery plan is imperative for businesses that rely heavily on their networks, and having a checklist for disaster recovery processes makes recuperating from setbacks a simpler, pain-free process for everyone involved.
5 Critical Steps to Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan
1. Establish a Disaster Response Team
Create a disaster response team, and elect a leader or spokesperson. If your company has multiple locations, each location needs a core team for liaison purposes. Having a team in place that are trained and ready to deal with crisis situations eliminates unnecessary delays when disaster strikes.
2. Complete a Thorough Risk Assessment
It’s vital that you conduct a thorough risk assessment to ensure all eventualities are planned for should they occur. There are several areas of risk you should take into consideration:
External Risks. These include natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, as well as man-made risks such as terrorism, operational mistakes, sabotage and crime. Both civil risks (such as labour disputes and political instability) and supplier risks (like a supplier’s capacity to continue providing goods during a disaster) also fall within the external risk category.
Facility Risks. These dangers extend to those relating to your local premises. Potential risks include electrical failures or anomalies, water damage, climate control (or its failure) or an outbreak of fire. Other areas of risk include structural flaws and physical security.
Data Systems Risks. This category includes risks relating to the use of shared infrastructure (like networks, servers and application) that can potentially impact multiple departments. Consider shared servers, data storage, software applications, data communication networks and telecommunication systems.
Departmental Risks. Each department within your business has risks of failure that are specific to their unique functions. These could range from missing keys and records to vital equipment malfunctioning. It’s important that each department be prepared for risks and have backup personnel in place.
Desk-Level Risks. Seemingly minor in comparison to the others, desk-level risks are those that would hamper an individual employee from performing their duties optimally.
3. Create a Thorough Disaster Recover Plan Document
Your disaster recovery plan needs to be documented and stored in a safe location, as it’s this document that guides all recovery efforts after a disaster. Once you have one in place for your business, it’s vital to maintain it regularly, run periodic mock drills to safeguard against disaster and record all experiences so that the recovery plan stays current.
4. Cater for Cloud-based Data Centres and Applications
Along with your disaster recovery plan, create a written recovery plan for your cloud-based data centres and applications, one which is hosted remotely in a secure and redundant data centre. Schedule and test this plan at least once a year, and ensure all your staff can access the hosted environment during fail-over mode.
5. Protect Premise-based Data Centres
Within a premise-based data centre, make certain to install a fail-safe alarm system, high-temperature sensors, smoke and thermal detectors and potential areas for water entry. Keep sandbags available and if possible keep your data centre on street level and raise your server racks off the floor.
It’s far better to be safe than sorry, and the importance of creating a comprehensive disaster recovery plan can’t be understated. Take the time to ensure your network and data centre are safe in any eventuality. Keep testing your plan, and protect your business from threats and disasters.
