The Essential Elements of a Disaster Recovery Plan

Enterprises today are heavily dependent on technology and electronic data for their operations. As a result, the amount of data and information technology infrastructure getting lost to unforeseen disasters is also on the rise. They are losing their critical CAPEX and incurring heavy expenses due to disasters and mishaps, resulting in lost productivity. Necessary measures need to be taken within the organization to avoid all such losses due to disasters. One way in which enterprises can protect themselves & critical assets from disasters is by implementing a robust disaster recovery plan (DRP). Enterprises must mandatorily create one so that they can averse to the risk of any disaster. This plan needs to be easy to understand, and there should be room for customization to address the needs of an organization. An effective DRP must have the following elements-

• Setting Up a Disaster Recovery Team-

Organizations must set up a disaster recovery team beforehand. This team will develop, implement and maintain the DRP, and this identifies the team members and their responsibilities during any disaster-like situations. Besides the regular members, the DRP should also have information on the emergency contacts. In addition, all the employees within the organization must be informed about the established disaster recovery plan so that there are minimal losses during disasters or mishaps.

• Assessing & Identifying Disaster Risks -

The disaster recovery team needs to identify and assess all the possible risks that can hit the organization. Natural disasters, human-induced accidents, and emergencies, along with any technological incidents or breaches, are some common risks. Once all the risk forms have been identified, recovery strategies can be implemented with all the resources needed for recovering from disasters within a pre-decided time limit.

• Determining Critical Assets' Feasibility-

Any business organization must also evaluate its business processes to have a clear understanding of its critical operations. Such plans must be aligned to the organization's short-term goals rather than opting for long-term ones. However, some processes can't be compromised or delayed and must be processed once the disaster has passed by.

• Defining Backup and Off-Site Storage Procedures-

Such procedures need to identify what all needs to be backed up on priority. It also must have a clear path for who should be backing the data and how it will be done. Besides this, the location and frequency of backups occurring are essential to understand. Business-critical applications and data can be backed up on priority and post backups; they can be stored at multiple locations. Storing at multiple locations helps in faster retrieving the data post-disaster. As a good practice, a copy of the DRP must be kept at off-site locations.

• Testing the Disaster Recovery Plan

Disaster recovery planning is a continuous cycle, as forms of disasters and emergencies are dynamic and keep changing. Businesses must regularly test the DRP for evaluating the effectiveness of documented procedures at any point in time. The DRP can't be a static procedure, and there should always be scope for updating it, accounting for the changes in business procedures, technologies & changing disaster forms.

Wrapping Up:

Hence, an enterprise needs to develop a disaster recovery team that would create a DRP, which could comprise identifying and assessing disaster risks. Disaster recovery plans could also include the determination of critical applications along with specific backup procedures. Other procedures can also be included in the DRP, which are in line with the business. The DRP also needs to be regularly tested & maintained for preparing the organizations against any form of disaster or emergencies. Disaster Recovery providers like ESDS offer regular and redundant backups to avoid any losses and faster recovery of data without incurring any downtime.