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We’re in week 6 of our fITness challenge! If you missed last week’s challenge, you can catch up here.
Week 6: Update and Test Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster Recovery (DR) plans are critically important for your business to have in the event of… well, a disaster. But it’s not only natural disasters, power outages, or cyberattacks that need to be considered; it also includes a loss of key staff, reputation crisis, and – as we are all experiencing now – an infection or disease outbreak.
What Is a Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan?
Disaster Recovery plans are documents created by a business that provides specific instructions for employees and management to follow in the event of unplanned incidents. It acts as a guide on how to respond to these types of situations.
It’s important for your business to update and test its DR plan for many reasons. As technology changes, your staff changes, and your business evolves, so should your DR plan. To ensure business cohesion and continuity, you must evaluate and update the DR plan – should the worst occur.
Tips For Getting Started
- Define your recovery goals: This includes determining your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). How quickly does the data need to be recovered? Does certain data need to be prioritized over others? This also includes identifying specific responsibilities for the people involved in the DR plan as well.
- Define the order of operations: This includes which systems need to be restored in what order. Who gets notified and in what order? What kind of remote access is needed if the office is unavailable?
- Commit to routine DR plan testing: Depending on your business, the frequency in which you test your plan will vary. However, it should be done at least once a year. This not only includes testing your plan, but also testing your Your employees will need be prepared to get everything restored quickly and confidently.
- Set a review schedule: This should include assessing change factors, both internal and external to the company (ex: software/hardware updates, staff changes, regulatory changes, new vulnerabilities, etc.). during this review, you should also analyze data in relation to incidents that have occurred.
- Update DR plan: After reviewing, the DR plan should be updated accordingly and communicated to all employees.
- Have a cloud solution to store data: Cloud-based solutions are becoming increasingly common to use amongst businesses. This is because they automatically copy and download data every day, or every hour. This is critical in the event of natural disasters or cyberattacks.
We never know when a disaster will strike, but it’s better to have a working DR plan than to not have one. Failing to update and test this plan can lead to a significant amount of downtime, which can be devastating to business. Don’t let yours fall victim to an outdates, dysfunctional DR plan.