Business continuity and disaster recovery are fast becoming priorities for every company with natural disasters, power failures, human errors and malicious attacks compromising our security and ability to trade.
As different scenarios can affect business continuity in different ways, it is important to safeguard against every eventuality. To protect yourself and your organisation from any level of disruption, there are a number of simple steps you can take. Here we consider how to write a disaster recovery plan.
Assess your risks
The first, and one of the most important steps you can take, is to assess your risk.
Before you begin to write a disaster recovery plan it is important to consider all of the situations which could affect your business continuity and plan for each of the scenarios individually.
Make sure you know your essential business functions and consider how these could still operate in the event of an emergency. Think about how long it would be before your business was affected by the absence of email and internet connection. What about phone lines? How would you continue to trade if you could not communicate with your customers or suppliers? Are you insured against these disruptions?
It is also wise to consider how you would operate should certain areas of your office, or even the whole site, not be accessible.
Formulate a plan
Once you’ve established the ways in which your business could be affected by disaster, it is time to write a disaster recovery plan. Once completed, a successful and thorough plan will ensure that your critical business systems and processes are safeguarded against potential disaster and available when you need them to be.
An initial step towards this is to speak to your business peers. Ask the steps they take to ensure business continuity and discuss any concerns as well as recommendations they may have. Further to this, remember to involve your staff. Many employees will be keen to become part of your business continuity and disaster recovery team and may already have experience in this area from previous roles.
At this stage, it also makes sense to speak to your IT provider. They will already have a good knowledge of how your business and its systems operate and will be well equipped to offer you impartial, expert advice on all aspects of business continuity and disaster recovery. Should they not be able to offer these services themselves then they will certainly be able to introduce you to trusted and experienced business continuity and disaster recovery specialists.
Protect your data
When the time comes to write a disaster recovery plan, one of the most important steps you can take is to back up your data. In the event of a disaster two elements will be key in ensuring that you continue to trade: your staff and your data.
Taking a regular back up of your systems ensures that should your server fail or be destroyed all your important data and documents will still be available. If you are unsure of your options, your IT partner will be able to suggest the best back up and data storage solution for your organisation. While tape back up is still a popular choice, many companies are now choosing online back up for its simplicity and easy restoration features – all essential features for a strong business continuity and disaster recovery plan.
Regardless of your chosen method, the most important thing is to ensure that your back up is kept both securely and offsite, away from your primary location. Further to this, it makes sense to keep a list of important contact numbers somewhere secure with duplicates at offsite locations. These should include the details of key personnel such as employees, primary customers and suppliers.
Emergency offices
An essential part of writing a disaster recovery plan is to consider where your business would operate from should your primary site become inaccessible.
As soon as you’ve identified the key people and processes that you need to keep trading, it is important to look at alternate premises which could home your organisation temporarily. While a few small companies may be able to work from a director’s home, most will require a larger office environment. One way of approaching this is to look at local recovery centres. Positioned around the country, recovery centres are equipped with office desks and all the technology you’ll need to continue operating. Further to this, many companies also offer mobile recovery vehicles which can be used at your own premises.
Consider the costs
While choosing to write your disaster recovery plan and manage it yourself is a viable option, it is usually more cost effective to hand responsibility to an IT partner who, maximising on their economies of scale, can deliver the latest solutions at a more affordable cost than you could manage in house. Finally, don’t forget to test your plan at least once a year to ensure that, should disaster strike, your business truly is protected.
acs office solutions is experienced in all areas of business continuity and disaster recovery and can help with everything from formulating a BC & DR plan and protecting your data to providing emergency offices and thorough plan testing. Call 01604 704014 for help and advise on how to write a disaster recovery plan.
