This is not your run-of-the-mill basic guide to IT Disaster Recovery Planning. Instead, we made this so that anyone could successfully keep their systems and networks backed up properly, no matter their level of technical knowledge.
An IT disaster can happen at any time. However, you could be in trouble if your company doesn’t have an IT disaster recovery plan. It cannot be easy to do, but it is a crucial step for companies to take. Unfortunately, there is no one way to create a disaster recovery plan. However, there are specific guidelines that you can follow when designing your very own DRP. And to ensure that you have an effective IT disaster recovery plan, let’s look at some of the elements you need to keep in mind.
Sometimes, companies put it off, thinking that they are not important enough to happen to them. However, you could lose everything if you put it off for too long. It can also make your company vulnerable to cyber-attacks and possible lawsuits if your data is compromised. The more prepared you are for any disaster, the less likely you will lose your data or be unable to recover from the disaster.
Learn how to protect your data and company from an IT disaster and develop an IT disaster recovery plan. These helpful tips, best practices, and advice on protecting yourself and your data from natural or man-made disruptive events could potentially affect your information technology and, worse, cause you to lose the trust of your customers, reputation, money, and possibly your business.
Table of Contents
What is an IT Disaster Recovery Plan?
Even this giraffe is less confused about an IT disaster recovery plan after we sat down and talked to him.
IT disaster recovery planning is identifying potential risks to your IT systems and determining what you can do to mitigate them. The best disaster recovery planning practices can be implemented before a disaster strikes. But, unfortunately, the best disaster recovery planning in the world can’t save you if you don’t have a plan.
It is often said that you should have a disaster recovery plan in place to prepare for a possible disaster. It is all about being prepared. A disaster recovery plan is deployed with the end goal of your business surviving a disaster. But here’s the problem: When a disaster does occur, since every business is different, there is no one size fits all solution. What worked for some businesses won’t work for others.
It would be best if you always had a backup strategy to recover successfully in a disaster. In most disaster recovery plans, this strategy is called the “backup plan.”
To clarify, it is a redundant method that ensures that we can always recover our production environment by duplicating the backup in another location and sometimes in multiple locations. If there is a computer failure or a flood in the server room, how will your company be able to get back up and running as quickly as possible?
What steps do you need to take? As we live in an interconnected world, disasters can happen anywhere, and the impact is felt wherever they occur. The consequences are far-reaching, whether it’s a tornado in the United States or a flood in Asia.
IT Disaster Recovery Planning Goals
What would you like your disaster recovery plan to do, and how can creating one help you?
What would you like your disaster recovery plan to do and cover? The most important thing you’ll want it to do is minimize risk. Not only minimizing the risk of losing all your data but also having it accessible in a hurry if you lose it. You want to get back up and running as quickly as possible. Resuming your operations as fast as possible is a worthy goal.
Nothing good comes from being unable to access your network for days or weeks. Suppose your business is in an industry where you must comply with specific regulations. In that case, you’ll want to ensure your disaster recovery plan lowers the risk of penalties for non-compliance. You’ll also want to address employee, owner, investor, and client concerns. Knowing that their data is safe from disaster is the first step in ensuring that a small business can thrive.
Don’t Wait for Disaster to Strike
No matter where your office is located, something unexpected could happen at any time. So you need to be prepared, whether it be a flood, fire, or ginormous dust devil destroying everything in its path.
Planning and preparation are key elements to success. Preparation enables us to better prepare for our future. It helps us to be ready in case the unexpected occurs. It would help if you prepared your company’s IT disaster recovery plan, so it is not left vulnerable to losing all of its data. You must know what steps to take and how to protect your company’s information from being stolen or lost in a disaster.
If you’re like most small businesses, you probably don’t think hackers will waste their time on such a small fish. Well, you’re mistaken. Your business may be small, but that doesn’t mean hackers won’t waste their time trying to attack you. Even if they decide not to try, someone else might.
“To make myself clear: In the event of a data breach from any entity that controls a domain that your company relies on, don’t expect to be protected from reputational damage by the companies you trust with your security. Our critical recommendation is that your organization carefully consider the services and registries you rely on. It’s always better to be proactive than reactive regarding your business’s technology.
Identify Vulnerabilities and Threats to Your Business
You’ll never be able to secure your network without first identifying any vulnerabilities hackers could exploit to steal your data.
IT disaster recovery planning is a plan created to protect your company’s data and information in the event of a disaster. Several goals should be accomplished by IT disaster recovery planning. Here is a shortlist of the most important:
- Provide an overall plan and strategy that allows rebuilding the infrastructure just in case the worst-case scenario happens
- Provide all the information to prepare an effective and efficient emergency response
- Identify tasks related to data backup, restore, and recovery to the affected business processes.
- Ensure regular performance checks of backups and restores; we don’t want surprises.
- Ensure that appropriate measures are taken, and you can quickly resume work if disaster strikes.
- Develop procedures to ensure the integrity of data and other digital assets as part of a business continuity program
- Perform frequent tests, drills, and exercises to ensure everything is working and that you and your employees are prepared.
Disaster Recovery Planning Steps to Take
Don’t let these easy steps intimidate you and get in the way of backing up your data correctly.
IT disaster recovery planning is a process for identifying potential risks and creating a plan to minimize the impact of those risks. This process can be complex for small businesses, but the following steps and disaster recovery strategies can help you get started.
- Evaluate Risks- Use a worksheet to evaluate your business’s risks related to different types of disasters. Your worksheet should include the following questions: What are the consequences of each risk event? In other words, how will your business be affected if the risk event occurs? Is this a disaster that can happen to you? If so, how often does it occur in your area? What are the characteristics of the disaster that makes it likely to occur?
- Document Inventory– Taking inventory of your hardware and software allows business owners (and non-business owners) to prepare for a disaster. Disaster recovery planning can be as simple as backing up your data, but sometimes it’s not so simple. Keeping track of everything you use to keep your business running will save time and money if a disaster strikes.
- Recovery is Key- You will want to set your recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). The RTO is the time required to restore the systems and services critical for the business to return to operational status. Setting the RTO to zero hours might be too costly, but setting it to a significant number of hours may not be as expensive. The smaller your organization, the more likely you can afford to set a lower RTO. The RPO is the backup point your data will come back to. Restoring a system or a service from an RPO should be done as soon as possible. Doing so will allow for continuity and reduce confusion, lost opportunities, and frustration.
- Identifying Different Personnel Roles- Who should be in charge of doing what if a disaster strikes? Simply put, people in charge of particular activities need to understand what is expected of them and be knowledgeable about their roles. Do you have a clear picture of your position in a disaster scenario? Are there things you do not know how to accomplish that you should do? What are your job duties in a major disaster? what it boils down to is that you’ll need someone to be in charge of declaring a disaster, calling your IT team, calling vendors, and anyone else who can help or needs to be notified. You don’t want your team running around like chickens with their heads cut off when you need them to be cool, calm, and collected.
- Document your recovery strategy and outline response procedures- Any steps you plan to take before calling for outside help will be helpful when thinking about recovery. Include your business continuity, data protection, and security strategies in these plans and incorporate a Disaster Recovery Communication Plan into your procedures. You don’t want to leave anything to guesswork. You’ll want to have everything mapped out. Again the more prepared you and your team are, the less time it will take to restore your network, the less damage will be done, and the less money will be lost.
- Identifying sensitive documents and data you cannot lose- These are items your company cannot function without and cannot afford to lose—things like Personally Identifiable Information (PII). You’ll want this information backed up in at least two or three locations. The most crucial data is on an encrypted hard drive that is either kept separate from your computer or physically protected. By classifying this information correctly, you’ll speed up your recovery process.
- Data encryption of all backups- You know how hackers encrypt your data so that they can extort cryptocurrency from you? Well, why not beat them to the punch and encrypt it yourself? Nothing says that you’re proactive than actually preventing a successful ransomware attack from happening and having your data encrypted by hackers.
Where to keep your data
Keeping your data safe at a data center is integral to IT disaster recovery planning.
You should always back up your data and keep a copy offsite, preferably at a data center or with another company that can store your data. If your data is lost due to fire, theft, etc., you want to have easy access to a copy that you can have restored as quickly as possible.
You can also store important data onsite on a local server, but you do not want this to be the only place you store your data. Again, the key is ensuring that your company has easy access to its data regardless of the disaster you’re facing.
Practice Makes Perfect
To get the most out of disaster recovery planning using an IT-managed services provider. You’ll want to practice what you plan regularly.
You’ll want to run practice tests to know where your strong and weak points are. Would you play any sport competitively without at least practicing a few times? Probably not. You don’t have to spend a lot of time practicing, but to stay on top of your security, you’ll want to put aside a few minutes every month to ensure you’re prepared.
Wrapping Up
Disaster recovery is not something a business or company should ever forget because it’s an essential factor for many reasons. The last thing you want to do is try to recover from a disaster after you have already had to deal with it. Having a plan can help you prepare for what to do and ensure that you get your information and company data back to where it needs to be safely and securely. Therefore, having a disaster recovery plan in place for your company’s data is important.
It’s a great way to be prepared for any disaster and help you avoid losing important information that could lead to your company’s inability to operate. Having a disaster recovery plan in place is also a good idea because you will have a quick recovery plan if something happens and you need to restore your information. Lastly, your company’s data is irreplaceable; if it is not backed up or stored securely, it could be lost forever. Thus disaster recovery planning using an IT-managed services provider is invaluable to your business.
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