Business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) are two closely connected practices that help a company stay operational in the event of a crisis. While disaster recovery focused on how to get systems up and running after a tragedy, business continuity intended to create a proactive strategy that would keep organizations alive and running even in the face of a severe disaster. For that reason, a disaster recovery plan is confined to maintaining data security, preventing system damage, and fast restoring systems, whereas a business continuity plan encompasses all areas of the company, including business processes, people, partners, and suppliers.
Developing a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan: The Top 10 Steps
Whether your company’s products are digital or you depend on digital content, protecting your assets is critical since calamities can quickly wipe out your computer systems and the data they contain. Your BCDR strategy must be well-thought-out and capable of quickly returning your business to normal operations.
1. Identify Most Important Assets and Operations – The first step is to identify the critical infrastructure and operations that keep your company running. Sort your assets into three categories: mission-critical, important, and non-critical. Categorizing your assets will allow you to focus on retrieving the most important ones first, allowing your firm to resume operations as soon as feasible.
2. Establish Recovery Window – Once you’ve defined your assets, determine how long your business can afford to be offline. Your business-critical assets are the most significant segment. Your recovery window should specify the maximum amount of time (in hours) that your company may operate without access to its most critical data.
3. Define Recovery Propositions – Based on the stated assets and recovery window, define the suitable methodology and solutions. Recovery from tape backups, disk backups, or data replication to an offsite location with ‘hot’ failover are all options. Costs will be determined here.
4. Outline a Plan – The important assets, specified operations, and how they will be protected will establish the plan. Data restoration can be exceedingly difficult without a well-documented plan, and there is no assurance that it will be successful — some files may be lost forever.
5. Assign Roles and Develop a Communication Plan – Communication with your team during the recovery phase should not be one of the most difficult aspects of a crisis. It’s critical to develop a communication strategy and assign roles and responsibilities to the BC/DR team’s key members and stakeholders.
6. Disaster Recovery Site Development – The next phase is to put in place the systems and capabilities needed to carry out the BC/DR strategy. This will entail defining an offsite disaster recovery location, storage needs, and connection requirements in the event that the primary production data center is inaccessible.
7. Accessing Data and Application – Establish the proper data and application access communications and security protocols. Your apps and data are likely to be stored offsite in a remote location, and your users may be separated across the country.
8. In-Depth Update of the Plan – Create a more specific plan for each system, including what needs to be in place to execute failover to secondary/redundant connections and offsite storage. Each aspect of your strategy should be very precise and thorough – you don’t want any misunderstanding or confusion about the plan in the thick of a disaster.
9. Test the Plan – Manage and carry out each system’s plan, reporting the outcomes of each stage to ensure that all recovery objectives are reached. It’s also critical to keep your plan up to date as systems are upgraded or changed.
10. Fine-tune and Re-test Your Plan – Repeat Step 9 and re-test based on the adjustments until the plan’s objectives and goals are met. The tests that follow should put you in a position where you can implement the plan in the event of a true emergency. Re-testing should be done annually or whenever important infrastructure changes are made.
Organizations are changing to a new normal as we emerge from the COVID-19 epidemic, which will undoubtedly be more remote, digital, and cloud-based. Power outages, IT system crashes, natural disasters, pandemics, and other disruptions can all be avoided with good business continuity strategies. Willing to start a business continuity and disaster recovery plan? Contact Expert IT Solutions specialists for assistance in developing a plan to protect your business.
