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Disasters can strike without warning. A natural disaster, such as a hurricane or tornado, can damage your property and disrupt your business operations. A man-made disaster, such as a data breach or fire, can have the same effect.
If your business doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan in place, an unexpected event could cripple it. In this article, we will discuss what a disaster recovery plan is and how to create one for your business.
What is a disaster recovery plan?
A disaster recovery plan is a document that outlines how your business will continue operations in the event of a disaster. The plan should include information on how to protect your employees, customers, and property. It should also detail how to keep your business running if critical systems are damaged or destroyed.
Benefits of having a disaster recovery plan
Similar to other insurance plans, having a disaster recovery plan comes with several benefits, such as:
- Minimizing recovery time and delays
- Preventing potential legal exposure
- Improving security
- Avoiding last-minute decision-making during a catastrophe that might be costly
What are the types of disaster recovery plans?
DRPs can be customized to fit the needs of your specific industry. The following are examples of certain types of DRPs:
Network DRP
Developing a recovery plan for a network gets more difficult as its intricacy increases. It is critical to develop a step-by-step restoration plan, conduct thorough testing, and keep it up to date. Specific data should be included in the plan, such as the performance of the network or networking personnel.
Cloud DRP
A cloud disaster recovery (DR) plan can range from file backup procedures to full replication. Cloud DR is space-, time-, and cost-effective, but maintaining it demands strict management. The manager must be aware of both physical and virtual servers’ locations. In addition, security is an issue that frequently occurs in the cloud, but this can be alleviated with proper testing.
Data center DRP
A data center DRP is more focused on the data center facility and infrastructure. An operational risk assessment is a vital component of the data center DRP. It examines important elements such as building location, power systems and protection, security, and office space. The plan must consider a wide range of potential circumstances.
How to develop a disaster recovery plan
Creating a disaster recovery plan may seem like a daunting task, but it’s essential for protecting your business. Follow the steps below to create a plan that will help you weather any storm.
- Determining the scope of recovery.
- Collecting critical network documents.
- Pinpointing network weaknesses, threats, and vital assets.
- Analyzing data from previous incidents and outages, and how they were resolved.
- Assessing the current disaster recovery plans.
- Assigning an incident response team.
- Having higher management evaluate and authorize the DRP.
- Testing and updating the DRP
- Implementing the DRP
Organizations can’t always prevent disasters, but having an effective disaster recovery plan in place helps minimize the long-term impact and get operations back up and running as soon as possible. If your company is looking for the best IT support Miami can offer, you should partner with Nextek.
You may also like: How To Safeguard Your Business Against Natural Disasters
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