Why A Disaster Recovery Plan Is Crucial For Your Business
We’ve already spoken about the 3-2-1 backup method, as well as common mistakes when setting up backups, but what happens when disaster strikes? If you lost all of your data, applications and operations, how long would it take for your business to be back up and running?
A morning, a day, a week? Longer? Now, calculate how much this downtime would cost you. It really pays to be prepared.
Today, we’ve rounded up the key reasons why you need to think carefully about designing a disaster recovery plan.
Do you really need a disaster recovery plan?
What is a disaster recovery plan (DRP)?
A DRP is a well-thought-out, documented and structured approach to responding to unexpected issues – for example, data loss or storage failure. It’s a clear procedure that you can follow to minimise the impact of a catastrophe and quickly get back to what you are doing.
It’s important to remember that backups are a huge part of preventing and reducing the impact of data loss, but they are not the same as a fully-fledged DRP.
Why is a disaster recovery plan important?
We’ve already mentioned briefly about business downtime and the costs associated with unplanned incidents, but here are a few scenarios that could easily cause you to lose crucial data and applications.
Technology fails.
Nowadays, many businesses are fully reliant on technology; desktop computers, onsite servers, laptops and even their mobile devices. So, when disaster strikes and your hardware fails, it can interrupt your entire operation.
Human errors.
No matter how well-trained and experienced we are at our jobs, mistakes happen. Ensuring your data is backed up properly, regularly and without error is no easy task, especially when you’re overseeing a number of other areas in your business.
Natural disaster or burglary.
Whilst it might seem a bit extreme to prepare for hurricanes and tornadoes, Mother Nature is unpredictable and can strike at any time. The UK is – usually – less affected by these types of disasters, but it’s still good to be prepared. It could be that your office building experiences a leak, fire or burglary, which in turn results in data loss.
How do I begin to craft a disaster recovery plan?
There are different types of DRPs and each business will require a slightly different process, so it’s best to chat with your IT department or another IT professional to craft one that suits your specific business or team.
A few things to consider include, the applications that are integral to the running of your company, the most serious threats and vulnerabilities and your organisations’ resources.
But, again, this is just a brief overview. Please get in touch for a closer look at how to craft your own disaster recovery plan.