Disaster Recovery Planning – A Key Component of Business Continuity

double exposure of businessman crafting disaster recovery plan

Last Updated on February 1, 2022

Disaster Recovery (DR) is the process of restoring normal operations after an unplanned incident. DR plans should include steps for recovering critical systems, data, and secure access.

The Purpose of DRP

Disaster recovery planning is a critical part of any business continuity plan. Its goal is to help your organization restore normal operations as quickly as possible after an incident. By creating and implementing a disaster recovery plan, you can minimize the disruption caused by an incident and help keep your business running.

The use of information technologies is essential for businesses today. IT systems are used in almost every area of life, from healthcare to commerce and beyond. Therefore, it is crucial to have proper protection and secure operation of information systems. Companies that don’t adopt IT systems will quickly fall behind their competitors. 

Suppose a company doesn’t have the tools to ensure business continuity and resume normal operations in the event of an incident. In that case, it could be at risk for disruptions and financial losses. An incident can not only disrupt business, but it can also prove to be damaging. Even a short outage, even a few hours of downtime, can cause severe damage in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.

However, careful planning and a recovery plan can prevent business operations from collapsing. In addition, a well-crafted recovery plan ensures that critical systems will be up and running as quickly as possible after an incident, minimizing the business impact.

What is a Disaster Recovery Plan or DRP?

Disaster recovery is the process of recovering from a disaster, simple as that. This includes restoring critical systems and data and returning to normal operations. A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a document that outlines how an organization will respond to and recover from a disaster.

Disasters can strike in many forms, from equipment failures and local power outages to cyber-attacks and even natural disasters. Therefore, organizations need to have a plan to ensure that they can continue operations in the event of an interruption.

Disaster recovery planning is a vital part of any company’s IT infrastructure. By developing a plan and rehearsing it, your company can minimize the effects of any potential incident and return to normal operations as quickly as possible. However, even if a company has a plan, it may not be able to respond promptly and effectively without regular testing. 

In an actual incident, if the recovery plan is not implemented efficiently, the damage may be so significant that the business may not be able to continue operations.

co working business team consulting meeting planning strategy and brainstorming disaster recovery plan

Components of a Successful DRP

A disaster recovery plan should include a description of the organization’s IT infrastructure and business processes, as well as detailed instructions for restoring IT and business operations in the event of a disaster. 

The plan should also identify key personnel responsible for carrying out the recovery plan and establish procedures for testing and updating the plan regularly.

The disaster recovery plan should include the following steps: 

  • Document all critical systems and data
  • Implementing the right technology
  • Backup data to online and offline
  • Test the recovery plan
  • Make sure employees know how to use the plan

Backing up your company’s data is undoubtedly essential for a disaster recovery plan. 

The DRP should also ensure adequate storage and IT availability and integrity to support failover and recovery procedures critical to your business.

Offloading is moving workloads to backup systems to minimize the disruption of the incident to operational processes and user experience. This can help ensure that critical services are maintained even in an unexpected outage or incident.

Organizations need to consider what potential emergencies they may face and the consequences for their operations before developing a disaster recovery plan. Emergencies can vary in scope and impact, so it is essential to tailor the plan to meet the organization’s specific needs. By considering the risks and effects of different emergencies, businesses can create a plan that will help them get back up and running as quickly as possible if disaster strikes.

Business Continuity Planning

Recovery from an incident also depends on having up-to-date copies of your data and fast, reliable computer processing. This allows you to continue operations while the incident is investigated and resolved. For example, suppose the primary server goes down due to a natural disaster, technical failure, or cyber-attack. In that case, the company must recover the lost data from a secondary location where the backups are stored. 

The company should have a secondary location that is geographically or virtually different from the incident site. This allows the company to move processing to that remote location for business continuity.

engineer working on disaster recovery

The critical elements of an effective recovery plan:

  1. Backup is the essential first step in any recovery plan – determining what your company needs in terms of backup or relocation. Once you know that, you can begin to plan who should do backups and how they should be done.
  2. The Disaster Recovery Team is responsible for creating, monitoring, and managing the disaster recovery plan. The plan includes the roles and responsibilities of each member.
  3. Critical Sytems An effective recovery plan identifies the systems, applications, data, and other resources crucial to business continuity and outlines the basic steps required to recover the data.
  4. Risk assessment is a comprehensive document that identifies potential hazards and associated risks to the organization. Depending on the type of incident, the assessment typically considers factors like the likelihood and severity of an incident.
  5. Test and Update: The recovery team must constantly monitor its recovery strategy and test and update it to meet ever-changing threats and business needs. 

Key benefits of a disaster recovery plan:

  • Rapid recovery of systems, services, and applications is critical to any organization’s success. By implementing the proper procedures and tools, you can ensure that your business functions are up and running as quickly as possible.
  • Mitigating potential damages and losses from downtime are essential to preserving your organization’s productivity and ensuring its long-term success.
  • Critical process monitoring and management ensure that required processes remain active to ensure business continuity in the event of a disruption.
  • Minimizes the possibility of any damage to the organization’s reputation.

Many professionals use the RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and the RPO (Recovery Point Objective) to measure the effectiveness of disaster recovery. The RTO is the time between failure and restart, and the RPO is the data loss tolerance. Ideally, these two numbers should be deficient. First, however, you need a reliable infrastructure and personnel in place.

Disaster Recovery Solutions and Tools

A well-crafted recovery plan is vital for any defensive strategy, but it is not the only element in place. A safe and secure working environment and risk-reducing technologies are also essential.

For data protection, Daas (Desktop-as-a-service) and BaaS (Backup-as-a-service) solutions are essential. They hold the entire data set for an institution or company, making them a key part of any data security plan.

Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)

DaaS, or virtual desktop infrastructure, is a cloud-based solution that has become increasingly widespread in businesses. The technology allows all user data to be stored in the cloud, providing many benefits for companies. For example, employees can log in to their virtual desktops from any endpoint and have the same access as if they were sitting at their desks at work.

The advantages of Daas include:

  • The separation of data and device.
  • The independence of access from location and network.
  • No barriers to teleworking.
  • Reduced potential for human error.

These advantages can lead to increased efficiency and productivity in the workplace. The resulting work environment is safe, fast, and efficient – it also changes the way people think about work and gives them great flexibility in time and space.

Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS)

BaaS is a secure, cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solution. A comprehensive service-level backup guarantees quick and reliable restores, so you can get your business back up and running as soon as possible.

The backup and recovery service is designed to be highly adaptable to different IT environments, quickly deployed, and capable of backing up and restoring data on all devices.

The benefits of Backup-as-a-Service (Baas) include:

  • Increased security.
  • Having a backup of your data off-site can help protect your data in the event of a ransomware attack or other data-loss incident. 
  • Easier disaster recovery – In the event of a natural disaster or other significant outages, having your data backed up off-site can help you get back up and running faster. 
  • Reduced workload for IT staff – Baas can help lighten the load for IT staff by automating the backup process and providing 24/7 monitoring and support.

In conclusion

Disaster recovery planning is the essential first step in any business continuity plan. A disaster recovery plan will ensure that your organization is prepared when a disruptive incident occurs. This can help reduce post-incident impacts and could mean closer collaboration between different teams and IT professionals as they work fast to restore normal operations as quickly as possible. 

The key to disaster recovery planning success is both a tested and current plan, employed by all team members so that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities during an outage or disruptive event.

 

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