Top 5 Tips for Disaster Recovery Planning

 In this modern era of “always-on” business, prolonged downtime is not acceptable.  It is the need of the generation to keep small or large businesses running all the time. A steady rise in data security attacks and continuously changing IT landscape have revolutionised the disaster recovery market in recent years. According to stats, 86% of companies experienced system downtime in the last 12 months.  A report says, 90% of businesses losing data due to disaster are forced to shut down within two years. To most of the organisations, reliance on IT simply means not operating when the system went down. Such companies need to have a disaster recovery solution in place to make sure the businesses operate even after a disaster.

Indeed, IT disasters are unpredictable, but recovery needs to be planned, predictable and controlled. A recovery plan describes the scenarios to resume work as soon as possible and reduces interruptions in the aftermath of a disaster. It enables sufficient IT recovery and the prevention of data loss. A recovery plan should be a thoroughly detailed report that includes all the ins and outs of the policy right from emergency contacts to succession planning. Additionally, the dynamic nature of IT requires constant review and updates of the process and plan. It must be a part of everyday operations.

Here are a few essential keys to consider while selecting a disaster recovery plan.

1. Know Your Threats and Prioritize Them

The first stage of developing an effective DR plan is to understand the most severe threats to your IT infrastructure and their impact on everyday operations and long-run business success. Identifying risks like system failure, staff error, fire or power loss can help to put the solution in place and determine the course of action needed for recovery.

Large-scale disasters like storm require careful planning and execution. A significant concern is business continuity when a storm strikes and backup data storage failure. To address these issues, it is mandatory to make a list of potential disasters and prioritizing them depending on their occurrence. Post-disaster ranking determines the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for every service.

Along with RTOs, Recovery Point Objective (RPO) need to be considered in the recovery plan. In other words, a volume of data a company is prepared to lose is RPO. Data Backup frequently will help you to meet your RPO.

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