What would happen if your employees were unable to work because of data loss, hardware malfunction, or some other type of disaster? Downtime is a serious issue because disruption to your operations can result in significant financial consequences. The best way to avoid costly downtime due to a disaster is to have a disaster recovery plan. An effective disaster recovery process can help your company bounce back quickly with minimal downtime.
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
When IT professionals talk about disaster recovery, they’re referring to a set of policies and procedures created to help businesses prepare for the unknown. This preventive measure is a crucial part of a business continuity plan (BCP). With a recovery plan, you can set up steps to help keep incidents from occurring and develop corrective measures to get your business back on its feet if a disaster does happen.
While you can try to implement your own disaster recovery plan, it’s recommended to get the help of a professional, like Stability Networks. An expert IT provider has the knowledge and experience to help you craft a thorough plan that leaves nothing out. You can rest easy knowing all of your bases are covered.
How to Create a Recovery Plan
To create a strong disaster recovery plan, there are a few steps you need to follow:
- Identify Personnel: Certain individuals inside and outside of your organization should be assigned specific roles in your plan. These individuals need to be identified and there should be information regarding when and how to contact these people.
- Document Infrastructure: Document your network infrastructure in detail. Having a step-by-step guide on network configurations can help to expedite the recovery process. Since this document would be needed in case your network went down, it would be a good idea to store it offline.
- Create Disaster Checklist: Not every disruption counts as a disaster. For example, you may experience something like a temporary power outage. Normally, a plan would not be initiated for a situation like this. You need to create a checklist that defines what a disaster is.
- Document the Procedure: When a situation is identified as a disaster, there should be a document that clearly explains the recovery strategy.
- Test and Update: The challenges your company faces is going to change as it grows and implements new technology. Your plan needs to be adjusted accordingly to account for these changes to ensure the procedure is still relevant.
How Disaster Recovery Plans Work
Before a disaster recovery plan can be made, you need to establish certain goals you want your plan to accomplish. Every business is unique, so having specific goals can allow you to tailor your plan to the needs of your business. Common objectives include risk reduction, business continuity, and quick response.
Risk Reduction
One of the main purposes of a disaster recovery plan is to reduce the risk of downtime. In order to achieve this, it’s necessary to perform a risk assessment. With a risk assessment, you can gain insight into existing vulnerabilities in your network that could lead to problems down the road. This information is key to preventing issues like data breaches and cyber-attacks because you can fix vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
Business Continuity
You can’t make money if your employees are unable to work. Keeping your business up and running should be a top priority in a disaster recovery plan. Here is where you and your vendor create a strategy to keep critical business functions operational. One such strategy is creating redundant data backups in the case of an emergency. If something happens that results in data loss, the redundant data can be used to restore the information you lost.
Quick Response
Disaster recovery can significantly decrease the amount of downtime your company experiences. However, minimizing downtime also requires your IT team to react to the problem in a timely fashion. It’s important to create a plan that will be able to mobilize and coordinate your IT team as soon as an issue arises.
Let Stability Networks Help You Minimize Downtime
At Stability Networks, our focus is on improving your business through technology solutions. When you need help with your IT infrastructure, our team is there for you. Our experienced technicians can work with you to draft a disaster recovery plan that ensures business continuity.
If you would like to learn more about how to create a disaster recovery plan and how Stability Networks can help, contact us today!
