IT Disaster Recovery Plan – Be Planned, Be Safe

Disaster Recovery Plan is a plan that aims for business consistency in the event of disaster to recover and protect the business’s resources which are destroyed. Such plan is documented in written form and involves all the procedures that are to be followed in the event of disaster.

The main goal of the entire IT Disaster Recovery Planning project is to formulate a detailed recovery plan. Sometimes, the disaster recovery plan is referred to as a business continuity plan, but both are distinct from each other.

• Disaster Recovery Planning is the pre-planning of the actions that will be implemented and reacted post disaster scenarios.
• Business Continuity Planning defines the threats and scenarios that will have an adverse impact on an organization. It is about preventing the Disaster Scenario from occurring.

As like any disaster which when occurs brings the consistency of the normal functions to halt. A disaster recovery plan is aimed to minimize the effects of disaster and also to get the organization resumed to normal operations functions quickly. It involves a deep analysis of the risk assessment, continuity needs and the business process as well.

The disaster recovery plans should include complete networking system of the organization as all are interlinked and hence all the components are essential. The strategies should be developed for IT systems, data, and applications which include the laptops, data, desktops, servers, networks, and connectivity. A disaster recovery what is plan has a number of stages involved in strategizing the plan.

Some of the stages include the following:

• A thorough understanding by the team about the organization’s working process and how resources in the organization are interrelated to each other.
• An assessment of the organization’s vulnerability in all departments of organizations.
• The impact of the event of a disaster on all the levels of the organization has to be understood by the DRP team so that they can plan accordingly.
• The DRP team then starts with the short-term recovery plan and also plan up a long-term recovery plan which should include the plan to resume to the normal business processes.
• Testing of the whole plan is done and should also be updated regularly when the changes in the organization operations take place.

Every business organization being a small-scale or large-scale should have a disaster recovery plan as this does not let the organization get much downtime as all the planning is done prior to the disaster event.

Research says that around 25 percent of small firms that close after the disaster event occurred don’t reopen. Resultantly, this causes a lot of problems for the owners and the employees.

An event disaster can occur in two ways:

a) Natural disasters – It is a catastrophe that is caused by the forces of nature. For example floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, landslides, etc.

Any firm can be affected by a natural disaster without any prior alarm which can adversely affect the organization’s regular functions. Therefore, to have a backup plan set up cannot prevent the disaster to occur but can help fighting the loss after its occurrence.

b) Man-made disasters – It is a disastrous event that is caused by deliberate or negligent human actions. They are also called as a human-made disaster. For example Power failure, hazardous material spills, nuclear radiations, and accidents, etc.

As in the definition, the man-made disasters can occur with a deliberate intention or due to negligence, but at last both ways are not going to be safe if occurred. So, a plan for such disaster recovery will be beneficial.

Just making a DRP does not bring you the guarantee to prevent severe loss. At times, the practices followed for backup and disaster recovery are worst. A solid backup and a strong disaster recovery team is the only way to ensure business continuity with minimal loss to the business functions. The proprietors should be aware of the blunders made by the disaster recovery team while making up the plans.

Some of these are listed below:

• No written plan
• Lack of backup integrity
• Deplorable data storage practices
• No management support

Conclusion

The businesses should have a strong based, tested IT disaster recovery plan. It ensures a minimal loss and quick resume to normal functions of the organization after the disaster occurs.