A Business’ Guide to an Effective Disaster Recovery Plan

While there is no certainty that your business will be a target of a cyber attack or any type of disaster, the threat is always there. With the increasing occurrences of cybercrimes being directed at small, medium, and large businesses, for example, an effective disaster recovery plan is critical to an enterprise. A recovery plan will minimize the probable damage and restore your business operations quickly should you get victimized. And part of that plan should include a review of SAN Storage Prices.

Significance of having a disaster recovery plan

Various types of disasters can have a severe effect on business operations. Likewise, your company’s database or corporate network can get knocked out with a single cyber-attack. Without a recovery plan, data loss and downtime can force a company to file for bankruptcy.

Employees may think that data loss does not affect them that much. Full-time employees can still receive their pay during the transition. But for the enterprise, downtime means extensive financial losses. In the Ponemon Institute’s Cost of Data Breach Report 2020, the key findings include the following:

• Cost of a data breach (world): $3.86 million;
• The U.S. has the highest country cost, with healthcare getting the highest industry cost;
• $1.52 million (40 percent of the total cost of a data breach) represents the average lost business cost (refers to lost income due to system downtime and cost of acquiring new business);
• It takes a company an average of 280 days to identify and contain a data breach;
• Businesses with security automation reduced their average cost of data breach to $2.45 million versus the average cost of $6.03 million incurred by businesses without data security automation. ;

In many of the studies that have been conducted regarding cyber attacks, a company that experienced data loss and downtime lasting for ten days or more is likely to file for bankruptcy within a year. This is true for about 93 percent of companies that were attacked. From this, 43 percent of companies without a disaster recovery plan are likely to go out of business.

Disaster recovery (DRP) and business continuity planning (BCP) are the top priority, given the increasing number of cyberattacks, like the recent incidents that targeted Colonial Pipeline and JBS USA. This ensures the integrity of your business operations and data amid any potential losses from malicious attacks or even other eventualities.

Elements of a disaster recovery plan

When writing a disaster recovery plan (DRP) you should have detailed scenarios for quick work resumption and reduction of interruptions, and ways to address any form of disaster. Being a vital part of your business continuity plan, it should also include the means to provide enough time for IT recovery and preventing future data losses.

Your DRP should be easy to understand and follow and can be customized to your organization’s specific needs. Thus, you need to know what elements are essential to creating an effective DR plan.

1. A disaster recovery team

Select the essential people for a DRP team who will be responsible for the development, implementation, and maintenance of your DRP. Define the responsibilities of each member, and the most immediate way to contact them when there’s suspicious activity. Identify the point person to contact, but all your employees should be aware of and understand your organization’s DRP and what each one should do in case of a disaster.

2. Risk identification and assessment

The DRP team must identify and assess every risk, from natural disasters, technology-related events, and man-made emergencies. Segregating them will help you create better recovery strategies and establish resources within an acceptable and predetermined period.

3. Critical documents, resources, and applications list

Which business processes are critical to your operation? Your plan should focus on short-term ways to survive because it will take time to restore your company’s capacity to function fully after a disaster. Revenue generation should be the top priority because you still need to process your payroll.

4. Offsite and backup storage programs

The team should specify what to back up, who will do it, and how to do the backup process. The plan must identify the backup location and the frequency of doing backups. Back up all your documents, critical applications, and equipment, such as customer and vendor listings, inventory records, current employee roster/contact information, tax returns, and financial statements. Store items critical to your daily operations, and a copy of your disaster recovery plan in a secure physical offsite base.

5. DR plan testing and maintenance

Emergencies and disasters are unpredictable, so it pays to routinely test your recovery plan. The testing allows you to evaluate if the procedures are appropriate and effective. Through testing, your team can update the plan regularly, and adapt it to the changes in technology, your business processes, and the current risks.

Developing an effective DRP: The key steps

An effective disaster recovery plan starts with a detailed procedure on getting your organization ready to defend against and survive any risk. Your DRP must analyze and incorporate risk assessment. It should identify all the key elements that will quickly cancel the negative effects of the unavoidable circumstances.

Critical to an effective DRP is backing up particular data and the optimization of all your resources.

1. Backup all critical data

Each workday, your business generates huge volumes of data and data files. Malware, hacking, human error, and hardware failure are some of the ways data can be stolen, compromised, corrupted, or lost. Corrupted files and data loss results in business disruption. Your DRP and business continuity plan should include a data backup plan, which identifies data on your wireless devices, computers, and network servers. It should include a regular schedule of backups. Aside from digital data, you should also back up the hard copies of vital records.

2. Select the right backup model

Choose whether you want a full backup, incremental backup, or differential backup. In the full backup, the system copies all your generated data every time you backup. The process takes longer but the restoration time is marginal. Incremental backup is faster because it only copies the newly added files, altered files, or files moved to different locations. It requires less storage, but the older versions will no longer be available.

In the differential backup, the process copies the previous backup together with the copies of the altered data.

In any of these models, you should have one full backup. If you want a more advanced option, perform a full backup each week, with either differential or incremental backup daily.

3. Pick the right backup strategy

Aside from having the right backup model, what’s more critical is choosing the most appropriate backup strategy. Options include onsite, offsite, cloud, sustainable data centers, and more. Whatever option you choose, the most effective is creating at least three copies of the backup, using two types of storage media type, and storing one copy of the backup files in a location outside the office.

Conclusion

While technology is essential to business operations today, it also presents different forms of risks. When there is a natural, man-made, or technical disaster, your critical business functions can be disrupted. Your company’s survival depends on your preparation, starting with having a comprehensive and easy-to-implement disaster recovery plan. The DRP should identify the key individuals to handle the right mitigation. They must have the knowledge and the power to access your data recovery systems, leadership skills to cope without waiting for key executives, and the competence to adopt the DRP after assessing the situation.

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