A Guide to Successful IT Disaster Recovery Planning

A Guide to Successful IT Disaster Recovery Planning

What would happen to your business and the livelihood of all those who depend on it should your entire network abruptly disappear? If your client lists, internal documents, etc. were utterly lost? This type of IT calamity isn’t as rare as you’d think. Even major tech companies suffer catastrophic technical issues because of little mistakes. If you want to brave the storm of disaster relatively unscathed, you need to plan ahead.

Have Plan and Test it

You need to figure out what is necessary for your business to operate, and how fast you would need those aspects to get back online; applications, e-mail, etc. You should also designate a process for informing clients of the issue and to reassure them.

Look into a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) & Disaster Recovery Plan Template (DRP) if you are unsure of how to get this process started.

Hiring a managed services provider to oversee the implementation and fine tune your recovery plan would be a sound investment. Outsourcing this position is usually the choice for smaller companies that can’t afford to keep an MSP on staff at all times. Regardless of the how, you need to make sure you have a technically sound plan in place to get your system back up and running in a timely manner.

Once you have a plan, test it. One of the first rules in disaster planning is that the plan never goes to plan. Go through the motions and ensure you are actually prepared for the worst.

Backup Your Data, Twice

Part of your plan should entail figuring out your RPO or recovery point objective. Simply put, this refers to the amount time between your last backup and when a disaster occurs that your business can handle. You need to figure out how much data loss is acceptable and plan accordingly.

Anything disastrous enough to take your business down, will probably also make it tough to do an onsite data backup. Redundant data storage located off site that allows access to critical components of your business should be an essential element of your recovery plan. You should also be sure to back up laptops regularly, and other computers as this will ensure that data that was used while traveling, or just never made it one to the network servers, is also protected.

You should also be wary of the security surrounding your backup data. If a malicious attack occurred on your system, simply transferring unsecured data may be a terrible idea. Your off-site storage should also have heavy encryption to protect from such intruders.

Protect Your Systems:

Most businesses run on laptops and other mobile devices. Laptops and mobile devices are easily stolen or misplaced. Theft recovery software and remote data deletion tools can be critical to protective, sensitive aspects of your business when a loss or theft occurs.

Email is another realm that should have some security in place. An errant misclick by an employee can open your whole system up to intruders.

Regular updates to Virus software should also be a priority.