5 Steps to Forming a Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster recovery is the process by which you resume business after a disruptive event. Weather-related events, world events, and human error are all potential disasters where a disaster recovery plan is important to have in place. A plan will dictate how employees will communicate, where they will go, and how they will go about doing their jobs in the event of a disaster. Details can vary greatly depending on the type of business, as well as the size and scope of the company. Regardless of the size or scope of your company, a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is critical in order to save you large amounts of time and money in the event of an emergency. Below are five things to consider:
Disaster Recovery Plan Basics
Your disaster recovery plan should include the ins and outs of the plan, down to the minute details of what should happen in the event of a disaster. This should include emergency contacts through succession planning.
Understand Threats and Consequences
In order to create a cohesive plan, you must first understand the threats and consequences of each potential event, whether it’s a human-generated threat or environmental disaster. To address these concerns, make a list of potential disasters in the order that they are likely to occur. For example, if you live in California that is located near a significant fault line, you’re more likely to experience an earthquake than a company that is not.
Prevention, Detection, and Connection Measures
Three types of measures should be taken in your business’ disaster recovery plan: preventative, detective and corrective. Preventative measures will avert an event from happening, most likely a human error. Detective measures may detect unwanted events, such as fire alarm installation whereas corrective measures mainly focus on restorative measures after a disaster.
Address Data Loss
As more and more businesses switch to cloud-based applications, they must take the proper measures to ensure there will be minimal data loss in the case of an event. Proper backup is necessary to prevent the loss of key data.
Test Out the Plan
Ensure that employees are aware of the role. Test out the plan often to see if there updates or changes to be made, particularly as your business’ technology changes.
While a disaster recovery plan may cost a bit of money to put in to place, it ends up paying for itself in the long run, saving you money, time, and frustration in the case of a disaster. As something that is critical to the future success of your business, the earlier the plan is put into play, the better.
