What if you lost your entire IT infrastructure in a matter of hours, would your business survive?
Disaster recovery planning is essential to continue business operations after disasters occur. This could be anything from a prolonged power outage to a total infrastructure loss caused by catastrophic events. The goal of disaster recovery is to limit the effects of a disaster and take the necessary steps to ensure that the resources, personnel, and business processes are able to continue operation after a disaster occurs.
If you don’t currently have a plan in place, here are some things to think about:
- Determine the minimal amount of downtime your business can sustain during a disaster and design your plan around it.
- Disasters can be anything from a virus breakout to damage caused by server weather.
- Get executive leadership buy in and perform a Business Impact Analysis to identify risk, and determine critical business processes necessary to run your business.
- Identify a disaster response team made up of key members of critical business units.
- Document critical infrastructure and business components and make sure key data is backed up and stored in an alternate location.
- Keep important contact information and a list of 3rd party venders, in a safe place, if the services they provide are critical to your business.
- Continually test your plan and modify it as necessary.
Disaster recovery planning is not only about recovery but also about prevention. Make sure critical systems are configured for full redundancy and high availability. Have multiple electrical feeds and system power backed up by a UPS and generator. Make sure servers and desktops are patched and virus software is up-to-date. All of these items are preventative measures that can help minimize your disaster risk.
Remember that business needs, and the threats to your business, are constantly changing. All of these items will affect your disaster recovery plan, so it is important that you revisit it anytime a significant change is made. Good luck!
If you are interested in learning more about developing an effective disaster recovery plan, contact your EarthLink representative.
