Every company that relies on its information systems for daily operations and for customer relations needs to have a disaster recovery plan in place. The difference between a valid plan and no plan (or a bad plan) can mean the difference between staying in business or being out of business.
Downtime losses for companies that don’t fold usually include:
- Lost income
- Damages you owe customers for delay
- Loss of goodwill, because customers will go elsewhere when systems fail
- Information technology costs to get the systems running again
- Overhead costs that keep running
Information technology departments often try to develop their own disaster recovery plan, but this can be a big mistake. Disaster recovery is a critical component of any business. Because disaster recovery involves a high degree of technical complexity, you should review your disaster recovery plan with an outside consultant. Today, data centers offer disaster recovery consulting services, which people often call Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS).
Best Practices on How to Create a Reliable DR Strategy
While each business is different in size and function, most should address the following concerns when crafting a disaster recovery plan:
- Identify your risks. List every possible risk so you can develop a plan that responds to each one. External risks include fire, flooding, and loss of electrical power. Internal risks include poor programming (bugs) that can crash the system. Malware, cyberattacks, and backup failures also threaten your data. Then rank these risks by how likely they are and how much damage they can cause.
- Critical software. Some software must run before your team can use secondary software. Some software also keeps the company running and in touch with clients. Identify this critical primary software before disaster strikes.
- Allowable downtime. Identify the downtime consequences of each risk at each company location. Your plan should project the financial and staffing losses that each risk and each type of software, hardware, or network damage involves.
Set up your disaster recovery plan for a fast response
- Disaster recovery mechanisms. Review the different ways you can store your hardware, networks, and software. For example, cloud services at a data center can get critical software running quickly. They also reduce your dependence on internal hardware and networks, because the key components sit at the data center and not at the company site.
- Timelines. Review the timelines for activating every necessary technical component before disaster strikes.
- Necessary notices. Set up a way to notify all business personnel, as well as current and potential customers, about technology failures during an emergency.
Document damage, recovery, and testing
- Damage assessment. Put procedures in place to list, confirm, and evaluate each type of damage so that you can make insurance claims and file proper tax returns.
- Recovery. Explain each phase of the recovery process for each type of risk in step-by-step detail.
- Testing. Test your recovery plan during off-business hours so that you can fix glitches and faults before a real disaster occurs.
Questions to Ask When Using Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
Many of the questions that you should ask the DRaaS consultant are directly related to the best practices strategy.
Companies should ask some of the following questions:
- Which data and programs must I back up without fail?
- Where should I store my backups?
- How often should I run backups?
- How should we run the test phase of the disaster recovery plan?
- How long will the recovery take?
- What are the advantages to using a data center for disaster recovery, including data center cloud services?
Take the first step in your disaster recovery plan: call a Volico representative today
The best defense against disaster is preparation. The more risks you consider and the more strategies you have for dealing with the risks, the sooner your computer systems can be workable and accessible if a disaster occurs. A disaster plan for any size and type of business is essential, as significant downtime for most businesses is not a viable option. For help now with your disaster recovery plans, call Volico at (305) 735-8098 to talk with one of our skilled consultants.
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