Disasters-whether flood, fire, hurricane, or cyberattack-are unpredictable. They can also cause business shutdowns that can be financially devastating. In order to quickly recover from any type of disaster, you need to have a business continuity plan already in place. One of the most critical parts of the business continuity plan is the IT disaster recovery plan. Below are the steps for developing an IT disaster recovery plan.
First, compile a list of possible disasters for each of your sites, including natural disasters, weather events, facility damage, power outage, cyberattacks, and hardware or software failures. You may have to save the contacts of Water Damage Restoration Services, firefighters, and disaster relief firms that can provide you the emergency assistance during such calamities.
Second, identify each function that’s vital for your business. For each critical function, identify the software apps–along with the hardware and the data on servers, computers and mobile devices necessary to run them. To ensure you don’t miss anything, make a list of hardware (e.g., servers, desktops, laptops, mobile devices), software applications, and data.
Third, for each critical function, develop procedures for each disaster to prevent or mitigate the loss of your critical IT system components-hardware (including server rooms), applications, data, and connectivity. For instance, you can protect the critical assets in the server rooms by monitoring the temperatures using the alarm and security systems offered by Alarm.com. The best part, however, could be that such systems can send you alerts if temperatures exceed a set range. Moreover, you can retrieve historical reports summarizing temperature conditions for compliance. Once you notice this kind of discrepancy, take action to resolve the issues as quickly as possible for each disaster.
These procedures should outline the emergency steps to take for each disaster, the required data backup routines, and the data restoration process for each disaster. As for disasters such as wildfire, you can adopt preventive measures such as Intumescent coating, fireproof window laminates, a fire-specific sprinkler system, flame retardent, etc. You can also get natural disaster insurance cover to protect your business from heavy losses.
Fourth, once you have developed an IT disaster recovery plan, you should train all employees at least annually. Be sure to train new hires and those who transfer to new locations.
Lastly, test the plan regularly so that employees know what to do and what will happen. This will also help them to act quickly when disasters occur.
NSC Information Technology Group offers IT consulting to help you create an IT disaster recovery plan to meet your company’s needs. We can help you create a reliable data backup plan so no information is lost. Our managed IT team can help you restore your IT hardware, software, and data in the event of an emergency. Contact NSC Information Technology Group today to create an IT disaster recovery plan in order to ensure your business will survive no matter what may occur.