5 Things Your IT Disaster Recovery Plan Should Cover

While you may not always wish to address worst case scenarios as a business owner, sticking your head under the sand until the worst happens is not a strategy to adopt. With today’s technological advancements, you do not want to risk going through hours of downtime or getting hacked.

It’s, therefore, essential to implement a disaster recovery plan before catastrophe strikes. You can learn more about this on this IT blog with articles on disaster recovery.

Although having a disaster recovery plan is crucial, it’s important to evaluate how thorough your plan is, when it was last tested and updated, and if you have new technologies that can make work easier when it comes to recovery.

Here are some key things your IT disaster recovery plan should cover.

DRaaS Consideration

Disaster recovery as a service has become increasingly popular due to the growing practice of moving data operations into the cloud. DRaaS Services by TrueNorthITG have made data recovery easier and economical. Moreover, organizations are now better prepared for disasters. Some testing is more extensive than others, and for this reason, it’s important to ask your provider how they will test and validate recovery of data.

Updates

Organizations go through internal system changes from time to time. Unfortunately, only a few update their disaster recovery plan after implementation of these changes. Your DR plan should take into account all applications, systems, and technologies in use. Moreover, you’re likely ti encounter new technologies since you came up with your DR plan. It’s, therefore, important to ensure that your disaster recovery plan is up to date.

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Business Impact Analysis

Also known as BIA, business impact analysis helps to identify and evaluate any effects on man-made and natural events on business operations. As an organization, you should have all your major information put through a business impact analysis. With BIA, you can establish priorities for operations continuity, business continuity, and disaster recovery.

Focus on People

Most organization make the mistake of focusing too much on technology and ignoring people and processes. Remember that you’re not only recovering servers and data, but you’ll need to know how people can get up and running again after a disaster. Decide beforehand who will address your employees, clients, and victims in the event of a disaster. Determine what you plan to stay, how much to reveal and ways to reassure those affected that business will continue as usual.

Outline Your Priorities

Not everything in your organization is worth saving. You need to identify what is most important. Public release information may not be as important as proprietary information.Although having a disaster recovery plan in place is critical, it’s just not enough. You need to have it tested under expert supervision. This is the only way to know if your plan is effective.

Do not wait until disaster strikes to decide on the next step to take. Take the necessary precautions to ensure that your disaster recovery plan is up to date and tested. By incorporating the above tips, you’ll be well-prepared in case of a cyberattack or any other catastrophe.