Effective Disaster Recovery preparedness is a must for an organization to resume operations following/during a disaster. Many businesses tend to ignore Disaster Recovery with the assumption that a disaster is an unlikely event.  However with Dato projecting that ransomeware will only increase in the coming years, it is important that you have a sound strategy and plans in place to reduce the risk of data loss or interruption.

Assess Risk and Strategize Accordingly

The most important aspect of developing a robust Disaster Recovery Plan is to assess the risks involved for your organization. You need to brainstorm and identify all the risk areas in the event of a disaster. Depending on the risks identified, you need to strategize and build a strong plan to deal with a future disaster. In addition to having a plan, you also need to plan periodic Disaster Recovery exercises so that you are actually prepared for an event.

Define Goals

An important step in an effective Disaster Recovery plan is setting clear goals. Are you looking for a cold site to just dump data?  Warm site? A hot site, so that you can immediately move your production to your secondary location in the event that your primary goes dark?  Your plan should also include exercises to ensure that your organization is well prepared to deal with a disaster. If the exercise has clear goals defined then it will be effective. Setting easy and clear goals such as “Time taken to recover data” would go a long way into being prepared for a disaster. With goal setting and periodic exercise, you can make changes in your Disaster Recovery Plan as and when needed.

Effective Communication

It is important to keep all stakeholders involved in your Disaster Recovery planning and related exercises. You need to share the results of a Disaster Recovery exercise with relevant decision makers and seek feedback on the planning and results. Your stakeholders need to be satisfied with the recovery of all services and time taken to recover the data. This kind of communication keeps everyone on the same page and sets the expectation in case of a real disaster.

Assign Responsibilities

In addition to having a robust Disaster Recovery plan, it is also important to assign roles and responsibilities to deal with a disaster. You cannot count on a certain individual to be present when a disaster occurs. Sharing and rotating responsibilities is a good idea so that not everything depends on one individual.

Wowrack works with you to build a custom recovery plan for your organization. Every business is different and we are committed to finding the right, custom environment for your line of business.