Disaster recovery plays a vital role in your business’s continuity plan. As a matter of fact, to what degree is a company capable to recover from a disaster is directly proportional to the extent of business continuity planning (BCP) that was undertaken before the disaster hit it.
In a business continuity plan, disaster recovery primarily focuses on all the IT-related aspects that facilitate the overall business functions.
As more and more businesses increasingly rely on computer systems, the significance of an IT disaster recovery plan is always on a high priority in the company’s CEO to-do lists. This is because companies are faced with a multitude of disasters:
- Natural Disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, have a great impact on small and medium-sized businesses. An NIFB National Small Business Pollsuggested that a staggering 40 percent of small businesses directly affected by a serious natural hazard soon disappear.
- Local or Man-made Disasters, like prolonged power outage, fire, water leakage or fire.
- Technical Disasters, e.g., data breach, cyber-attack, server crash, etc.
And this goes without saying that careful disaster planning is a key component of successful data recovery. You wouldn’t want to cut corners or overdo things and make the process even harder!
Here are some common mistakes that businesses make in disaster recovery.
Mistake#1 They are the only ones who know it.
Chalking out a disaster recovery (DR) strategy is the IT department’s job, but the IT staffers shouldn’t be the only ones knowing it. What happens if for some reason, the IT functions are kept in abeyance or a responsible IT team member is unreachable?
A copy of the DR plan should be sent to all the business leaders, managers, executives and legal experts. Also, workers should be given proper training in accessing essential data. Better yet, write a recovery manual with step-by-step DR procedures and important login credentials.
Mistake#2 They don’t have a backup for their backup plan.
Things can go terribly wrong in the event of a natural disaster. Storing the backup plan on an office server is useless when you cannot access it because a hurricane just hit the city or the building caught fire.
It’s advisable to get the print copy of the backup plan to be kept both at your workspace and at home, or transfer it to a secure offsite storage location.
Mistake# 3 They don’t test a wide range of possibilities.
After you have created the DR plan, the next natural step is to run a test for a broad range of events. This will help you assess whether the plan is too complex for the front-line users and how badly you need the offsite backups.
Also, it will assist you figuring out as to how long it takes to download and recover all your data from cloud storage.
No business is impervious to IT disasters. Too many businesses perish because they were not well-prepared for natural disasters, software/hardware malfunctions or even human error. Want to know more about developing an IT disaster recovery plan?
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