An IT disaster recovery plan: Three tips to help your business

Many companies do not have a suitable IT disaster recovery plan in place and the results can be catastrophic if a business loses vital data which is non-recoverable.

There are three key ways to ensure you are protected so follow these tips and you should be fine.

All companies need to be thoroughly prepared for natural or man-made disasters and while their content will be vastly different dependent on the nature of the business, all recovery plans need to include the following to be successful:

1. Preventative measures 

Many disasters can be avoided through adequate foresight. A few simple steps can go a long way towards damage prevention.

Regular inspections are a good way of checking that no gaps or flaws that could one day trigger damage to data in the company’s IT systems have appeared – either by accident or through negligence.

Generators and surge protectors will prevent loss of, or too much, power from causing disruption.

Back-up servers, whether on site or off site, can enable fast data recovery in the event of a disaster.

Preventative measures alone are not enough to guarantee recovery in an emergency though.

Any IT disaster recovery plan also needs a range of detective measures to ensure that if disaster does strike, the business can respond quickly and effectively.

2. Detective measures

These steps are crucial for discovering potential IT system corruption or failures, through either man-made or natural causes.

While unlikely to prevent any attempts at deliberate sabotage, providing thorough staff training can help avoid disasters caused by human error.

To combat this scenario, it goes without saying robust anti-virus software is vital and high quality network monitoring software will also help detect a variety of threats.

Spotting a threat does not always mean that damage to the data will be avoided in time however, particularly in the case of natural disasters such as fires.

For situations where IT systems do become damaged, a recovery plan needs sufficient corrective measures too.

3. Corrective measures

These are the actions required after a disaster has occurred and if implemented properly they should ensure you recover the most important data as quickly as possible.

An IT disaster recovery plan must specify who is responsible for which tasks in case of emergency and include a priority ranking of the systems which need to be restored first.

Naturally, the most business-critical systems will require the most urgent attention.

Keeping the most important documents in the IT disaster recovery plan itself, as well as taking out an insurance policy in advance, are other crucial measures.

Naturally there are a vast number of specific steps to take in order to form a comprehensive IT disaster recovery plan.

There are too many to list here but hopefully this gives you some food for thought – if you would like further advice on how best to prepare, please contact our team today. We’d be only too happy to give you some advice.