Disaster recovery planning is something that many of us, unfortunately, don’t think about until it’s too late. But it is in fact, a crucial element of any business and without it you could be setting yourself up for, well….disaster!
Think of it as an insurance policy for your IT infrastructure. Hardware, software, telecoms, company data…..anything technology-related that your business couldn’t survive without.
A disaster recovery plan will assess all of these business-critical assets and put procedures in places to ensure that if the worst happens and disaster strikes, then you can be back up and running again as quickly and as seamlessly as possible. It will also protect your network from security threats through hacking, viruses or malware and ensure that all your vital company data is backed up securely off-site where it can be accessed and restored quickly in the event of a data loss.
Disaster could strike in a number of forms…..fire, flood, theft, data corruption, equipment failure….and an “it’ll never happen to me” attitude is asking for trouble.
For most of us, even a couple of hours with email access becomes frustrating, so ask yourself how you would manage if you lost connectivity for days, weeks, or even months? Do you have the flexibility of working remotely from another location? What about if your data was destroyed? Documents, contacts, personnel details, customer files….How quickly could you restore it? If your data was lost without backup, you could be looking at the end of your business as you know it. What about voice communications? If your main business telephone line was out of action, how easily could you re-direct the number and work from another location? Would you lose money if your customers couldn’t contact you for a couple of hours, a couple of days or a couple of weeks? Do you have plans in place to ensure that all of these elements are protected, and you can continue to run your business efficiently in the event of an emergency?
The bottom line is, downtime costs money and having a disaster recovery plan in place should be a high priority for any IT-dependent business. Many of us would struggle to continue to work without our IT systems and equipment, so preparing for the unthinkable really just makes good business sense.
To help you out, here are our top tips on preparing for disaster. You never know, one day this might just come in useful. In business, it really does pay to be prepared….
- Ensure all hardware – particularly servers – has good manufacturer’s warranties. Typically this would be three years cover with a four hour response or next business day at least.
- Ensure all business critical software has support from the suppliers and be clear what the support offered actually includes.
- Protect all vital physical equipment from theft.
- Protect key equipment from electrical surges or outages – a regular occurrence across the UK.
- Backup key data. A good disaster recovery plan is vital and it must be multi layered (i.e. don’t rely on one system). Remember though, a backup is only as good as the last restore!
- Protect system administration. Ensure that you either have qualified professional IT staff, or use an industry certified outsourced IT support company, who can maintain system integrity and security to ensure no risk is presented through viruses, spyware, hacking or incorrect access to data. Ensure you have a service level agreement with your IT department – whether in-house or external, so you know the likely response times in the event of things going wrong.
- Consider Cloud Computing solutions. By placing critical data and systems in the Cloud – a highly available, secure, fire protected environment – you almost completely eliminate the traditional low percentage chance but high risk losses like fire, flood and theft.
