Disasters happen, whether they’re driven by a global health crisis or cyber criminals, weather-related events, power outages, or human error. It’s risky to not have a disaster recovery plan in place, as more companies become reliant on technology to keep things running smoothly. This has been especially relevant since the Covid-19 pandemic and the huge shift to remote working and cloud-based computing.
Without a disaster recovery plan in place for your organisation, there is increased potential to suffer severe consequences, whether time, financial, or customer trust.
Surprisingly, many small businesses don’t have a disaster recovery plan, and find out the hard way that it is an essential part of getting back on track after disaster strikes.
What is a disaster recovery plan?
Disaster recovery is an important part of a business continuity plan – a documented strategy mapping out which systems and processes must be sustained and how during an unplanned disruption. A disaster recovery plan (DRP) sets out actions that need to be taken before, during, and after a disaster, to protect businesses if such an event occurs, and to ensure operations quickly resume. The DRP should be clearly documented, structured, and reviewed on a regular basis to ensure it stays relevant.
There are different types of plans and which your company utilises depends on your IT infrastructure. These plans may include:
Data centre disaster recovery
this option is centred on the physical data centre, outlining procedures to assess, resolve, and mitigate risks that can cause harm to the building location. This includes features and tools such as physical security, support personnel, backup power, HVAC, utility providers, and fire suppression utilities.
Virtualised disaster recovery
this centres on the process of creating virtual copies of operating systems, network resources, servers, and storage depositories. Virtualisation means there’s no need to reconstruct a physical server, as the restoration is done through virtual machines, which are easily created in minutes.
Cloud based disaster recovery
a cost-effective solution, cloud disaster recovery uses a cloud provider’s data center as a data recovery site. Organisations need to consider bandwidth, cloud storage costs, and security and compliance before implementation, to ensure this option is the right one.
Network disaster recovery
failure of the network can bring down the entire IT environment, so to have reliable connectivity, a disaster recovery plan should cover detailed step by step protocols of who to contact, equipment replacement, and actions needed to restore the network.
Benefits of a disaster recovery plan
Cyber-attacks are on the increase, with data breaches a particular concern. During severe natural disasters, affected physical sites are unlikely to be accessible. These issues can lead to catastrophic outcomes for organisations affected, if they don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place.
The most obvious benefit to a DRP is business continuity and being able to minimise downtime and delays so as to keep businesses operating as close to normal if a disaster occurs, such as hardware failures or network failure.
Factors such as downtime, operational disruptions, fines, loss of market trust all cost businesses dearly. In fact, 93% of companies who suffer an extended period of data loss are out of business within 12 months and 50% immediately file for bankruptcy.
The first step in ensuring this doesn’t happen to your business, is to seek the advice of IT experts in data backup and recovery. Having a step by step disaster plan will improve your business security, prevent cybercrime related events, and ensure unexpected events such as storm or fire won’t affect your important business data.
How do I protect my business?
A disaster recovery plan might seem overwhelming but it’s the first line of defence to prepare for the worst and protect against the risks of disaster. Creating a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is difficult and many organisations turns to managed service providers with specialist data back up and disaster recovery capabilities. This can be vital for protecting business continuity in the face of disaster or disruption, offering you peace of mind that your data and business critical IT infrastructure is protected.
Don’t wait until a disaster occurs to protect your business and minimise disruption. Contact Bespoke Technology about creating a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan to safeguard your business data against any failures.
