IT disasters are among the worst experiences a business can suffer through. Whether it’s a power outage taking out communications or malware corrupting work applications, your organization could incur even more damage if it takes too long to recover. That’s why disaster recovery planning is so important to address since creating a comprehensive strategy can help you restore essential operations and reduce your overall downtime. In this blog, we’ll discuss the value of disaster recovery planning and how to create a plan for your organization.
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What is Disaster Recovery Planning?
Disaster recovery planning is the process of recording and detailing how your organization can best resume workflow following a sudden disaster. Typically, this recovery plan covers how to restore essential IT systems and hardware needed to operate and communicate with customers. For IT managers, key areas of focus include restoring wireless networks, security applications, communication devices, workstations, and valuable business data. In such a volatile cybercrime climate, disaster recovery planning has become critical for small businesses to quickly resume work after an attack.
Strategies for Disaster Recovery Planning
No disaster recovery plan is quite the same since each is built according to your business structure and goals. Here are some strategies to consider when making your own disaster recovery plan:
Prioritize a Secure Data Backup Storage
Every disaster recovery plan must ensure all critical data is backed up or risk losing important files during recovery. For this reason, your business should update and backup data on a separate physical server. Through Innovative’s i3BDR service, you receive not only an onsite backup appliance, but also backup agents installed on all devices to automatically update backups of your files. Besides an onsite backup, having data replicated to an off-site server will ensure your business data remains secure from a potential data breach. All backups are stored in a Tier 4 datacenter and monitored by certified IT professionals to guarantee safe and accessible backup storage for your organization.
Inventory Essential Hardware
Along with noting important data, businesses should review the important tools within their infrastructure. Certain IT hardware—such as laptops, Wi-Fi routers, or network servers—make up the foundation of your internal operations your team needs to coordinate projects or report to clients. With sound IT support, ensure all essential devices within your infrastructure are both accounted for and protected from disruptions. Attacks can linger within apps or devices to take more information from your business. Using specialized AES 256bit end-to-end encryption software, keep your internal assets protected and your office running throughout recovery.
Taking inventory of all essential IT hardware can help secure your software as well as reduce the disaster recovery time of your services.
Review and Adapt Emergency Procedures
Disaster recovery planning should be orchestrated by a team of experts from each part of your organization. This Disaster Recovery Committee provides input on which systems and procedures should be taken to support their department. Noting which devices or software are most important to each department will help you prioritize the restoration of all current equipment. While reviewing emergency procedures, be sure to conduct disaster recovery tests each quarter. Using these reports, your team will be able to communicate the health status of backup procedures and how to improve the disaster recovery process.
Train Employees in Disaster Recovery Operations
Businesses must update employees on which IT systems and devices should be processed and restored after a disaster. Without proper training, human errors could increase, making your personnel an internal threat risk on your data security and network stability. For this reason, communicating with employees on what to do during recovery will make the process more effective and secure. With quality training, employees can navigate and manage their own department backups, restore important devices, and reduce mistakes made during recovery that could impact your business continuity.
Streamline Your Recovery with i3BDR
Being proactive about your business IT recovery promotes better business continuity and productivity. No matter what kind of disaster your company faces, rest assured you can back up your essential work data through and streamline disaster recovery with Innovative Integration’s i3BDR Solution: our all-in-one solution to boosting RPO while reducing RTO! Interested in our other services? Visit our Services and Products page today.
