4 Simple Steps to an Effective Disaster Recovery Plan

If your business doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan in place and you have no plans to adopt one in the near future, think again.

xfThe statistics are not in your favor. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 75 percent of organizations that fail to implement a business continuity plan are forced to close their doors within three years of a disaster.

The question isn’t will a disaster occur, but when? Disaster recovery plans effectively mitigate risk, and while the task of creating one might seem daunting, it doesn’t need to be. Designing your own disaster recovery plan only requires a small number of steps:

1. Educate yourself about the various levels of business disasters, which can range from slightly disruptive to completely disastrous:
   1. An important file or email is lost. Can you recover it and within what time frame?
   2. Your server crashes. How fast can you restore it and can you load a virtual system to restore efficiency?
   3. You cannot get to your office due to weather. Can your employees work from home without hassle?
2. Determine your tolerance level for each type of disaster: This includes how much data your business can afford to lose and how much downtime your business can endure in the event of a critical failure. If your business has low tolerance levels, it will incur higher costs. You need to work with an IT company to put the right technologies and procedures in place to be able to recover in each level of disaster.
3. Write a detailed plan: Using as many details as possible, develop a plan that describes what would occur in various disaster scenarios. Consider:
   1. What are all of the stages of your recovery process?
   2. How exactly would your network and key applications be affected?
   3. Who will be responsible?
   4. How will your business be affected? What exactly could happen?
   5. Whom among your workforce, clients, partners and vendors, will you need to notify?

While it may seem tiresome and unnecessary, going over these details well in advance is critical to your organization’s success if any of these scenarios actually occur.

4. Put your plan to the test. Ensure that each aspect of your plan works effectively. Does your backup technology function as it should? How long does it actually take to recover? This last step is absolutely vital as it enables your business to recover in the way that you’ve planned and at the speed you expected.

A disaster recovery plan is vital to your company’s continued growth and success. {company} will assist you in creating a comprehensive recovery plan to minimize the negative effects that occur following a disaster. To learn more, give us a call at {phone} or send us an email: {email}.