The secure storage of data is instrumental to ensuring that a business- be it small or large- functions efficiently and effectively. As such, the implications of losing key business data as a result of internal errors or external interference could be substantial. IT disaster recovery plans ensure that your business is equipped to react to and mediate the impacts of data loss. Read on to find out what an IT disaster recovery plan is, and how you can implement one.
What is a disaster recovery plan?
An IT disaster recovery plan (IT DRP) is a step-by-step plan designed to confirm the prioritisation and recovery of key data. Typically completed in conjunction with a business impact analysis, the main goal is to identify technological strategies to restore data, applications and hardware within a succinct timeframe. It’s there to make certain that in the event of a disaster -be it natural or manmade- that your business can respond in a timely and efficient manner. It also ensures data is protected from a compliance perspective, whilst maintaining the reputation you’ve built with your customers.
Why are IT disaster recovery plans so important?
When disaster strikes, it’s important that your business can react immediately to ensure the safe recovery of key data. Their successful implementation not only offers protection against data loss, but can also support your businesses’ reputation as a trustworthy setting that places the storage and protection of customer personal information as a top priority. Disaster recovery plans outline carefully considered responses to a range of potential disasters, including floods, fires, accidental damage, or cyber attacks. These outlines provide businesses with the opportunity to react immediately to disruptions by ensuring that critical IT systems can be swiftly restored, reducing downtime and its associated costs. By mitigating the potential impacts, disaster recovery plans also ensure that high standards of regulatory compliance are maintained at all times, even in a period of disruption.
Types of disaster recovery plans
IT Disaster Recovery Plans can be tailored to fit the individual needs of your business, but typically consist of one or more of the below formats;
Data centre disaster recovery
This plan identifies and reacts to infrastructure components as a part of the physical facility surroundings. Secondary data centres provide a backup document of components in the physical setting, such as security controls, heating, power and fire response systems.
Network disaster recovery
A simple but effective measure, a network specific IT recovery plan will detail steps to restore network services and gain access to key backup data. This will include a risk assessment, backup and data replication strategies, frequent testing and maintenance of existing and new systems, as well as carefully designed emergency response procedures.
Virtualised disaster recovery
Virtualised-focused plans are the ideal option for businesses who primarily utilise virtualised workloads. As a result of their smaller IT footprint, they are able to support frequent replication, which in turn allows for a built-in, virtual disaster recovery to be implemented.
Disaster recovery in the cloud
Cloud-based IT disaster recovery involves the configuration of an automatic workload failover to a cloud platform, offering immediate recovery of data following both minor disruptions and in the event of total data loss.
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)
A third party organisation is utilised to manage the replications and hosting of a business’ virtual and physical services, and typically include data protection and backup platforms.
Developing an effective IT disaster recovery plan
The most effective IT disaster recovery plan will allow users to continue to work even when servers and IT infrastructure are down. This begins with having a clear inventory of existing equipment and IT infrastructure, such as hardware, data, software and network resources. It also ensures that your employees are aware of their individual roles and responsibilities -and provided with the necessary training- as a part of the disaster response plan. Consider both physical risks such as floods, equipment damage or equipment theft/loss- and digital threats, such as ransomware attacks and data breaches to ensure that your business is aware of potential threats and can plan a response according to your priorities. An effective IT disaster recovery plan will empower your business to not just address these threats, but identify them. It will do so by incorporating thorough and continuous risk assessment efforts, designed to identify and respond to new and existing threats against your business.
Building a disaster recovery plan
Building your disaster recovery plan should begin with a foundation in two key metrics:
1. Recovery time objective (RTO)
The recovery time objective outlines the maximum amount of time that systems can be down without causing significant damage and disruption to your business.
2. Recovery point objective (RPO)
The recovery point objective is the maximum age of data that needs to be recovered in order to resume regular working operations. The RPO is also key to establishing how frequently data backups need to occur.
Your RTO and RPO values will be key considerations when choosing an IT disaster recovery plan, as the most effective plan will enable you to meet these key metrics more efficiently, as well as helping to track the success of the disaster recovery plan’s implementation.
RTO and RPO values will also give you an indication of the potential costs of implementing a successful disaster recovery plan. Generally, smaller RTO and RPO values indicate a smaller cost, as they require less time for your applications to recover following an interruption. However, as your business continues to grow and thrive, you can expect both values to increase. As such, it may be more cost effective to utilise a third party DRaaS. Cheeky Munkey can help you to avoid complicating factors through their IT disaster recovery services, allowing your employees to continue to focus on their work, as well as significantly reducing business costs.
A disaster recovery plan service will allow your business to continue to work even if your IT infrastructure is down. Whilst internal solutions, such as offering backup equipment or offsite data backups are common features of a disaster recovery plan, a third party service can utilise encryption technology to recreate server environments seamlessly.
Testing your disaster recovery plan
Frequent testing and assessment of the steps offers insights into how effectively the plan meets the predetermined RPO and RTO, and can provide feedback to make crucial amendments.
It’s important to note that in response to any changes, updates or added elements, those adjustments will need to be retested again. Consistently reviewing the plan will help to find any inconsistencies or missing elements, and will also help to confirm that all members of staff with responsibilities in the disaster recovery plan are aware of new components prior to a disastrous event occurring.
Training can be catered to suit your business needs, but will typically include “rehearsal” exercises. These can involve walking through the components of a disaster recovery plan to highlight inconsistencies, or simulating disaster scenarios (such as shutting down and restarting technologies/business operations) and trialling how quickly and efficiently daily practice can resume.
Preparing and implementing an IT disaster recovery plan will ensure that, in the event of an emergency, your business is able to efficiently respond to and recover from a range of threats. By expecting the unexpected, you can make sure that your customers view you as a trustworthy, responsible owner of their data, and can avoid unnecessary recovery costs. For advice and guidance on how Cheeky Munkey can support your business, consider our emergency IT support services and get in touch.
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