Having a recovery plan is essential in case your business experiences a natural disaster, technology failure, or other unexpected event that causes normal business operations to halt. In this article, we’ll examine some disaster recovery best practices that can help you get your company back up and running after experiencing this kind of disruption.
Have a Recovery Plan
Having a recovery plan in place before a disaster strikes is the best way to guard your business against unnecessarily lost time and revenue. Making sure that you implement the right backup software and make arrangements for alternate workspaces for your staff are two of the most important things you can include in your plan. According to Computer Weekly, you will also want to designate team members who can put your recovery process into action and determine a recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) to decide how far back your will need to go to find a set of backup applications and how quickly the they should be implemented.
Test Your Plan
Run a disaster recovery plan test at least once yearly to make sure that the processes you have put into place will actually work if your data is lost. While this testing can be costly and time-consuming, it is far less expensive than trying to recover all of your data in the event that the plan doesn’t function properly during an actual disaster-related work interruption.
Protect Your Backups
Protecting your backups in case of malware and ransomware can help you restore clean data in the event of a cyber invasion. While you can’t airgap on a continual basis, looking at 12-24 hours of data is far preferable than having to go back even further to remove the effects of an attack.
Make a Plan for Communication
Establishing a plan for inter-departmental communication is also key. Disaster recovery can be a stressful and intense process, but it can be made easier by keeping lines of contact open and making clear who is in charge.
Decide Where Your Staff Will Work
In the event that your main business location is not accessible, you will be need to have a plan for where your staff members will work. While working remotely from home is an option, it is often not the best long-term solution. Keep in mind that your employees may need access to certain pieces of equipment or data in order to perform their essential job functions, so plan accordingly.
Utilize the Cloud
Cloud storage is becoming more and more advanced and can be an essential part of your disaster recovery plan. Make sure you thoroughly test the service you choose to gauge its efficacy in the event of data loss in your other backups.
While natural disasters and other unexpected events can’t be avoided, you can ease the burden of data loss and get your business up and running much more quickly by following these best practices. While it may not seem as pressing as other day-to-day matters, having a disaster recovery plan is essential for the health of your business. While you hope to never need it, you will be so glad to have your ducks in a row in the event that you do!
