If your organization does not have a strong disaster recovery plan, your data may be adversely affected when a disaster occurs that affects your network.
Without a disaster recovery plan in place, your organization is likely to make reactive decisions with limited information when a disaster occurs resulting in damages to your network, lost data, and costs that can easily reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Organizations can’t afford to experience a disaster that affects their network and can’t be repaired quickly.
Therefore, it is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place before one occurs in order to quickly, efficiently, and safely get your network back up and running quickly.
Learning disaster recovery best practices will help get your network back up and running after an outage and prevent significant damage while minimizing costs to your organization.
Coeo understands how important a reliable network is and has helped thousands of organizations develop disaster recovery plans to get their network up and running properly after a disaster.
By the end of this article, you will understand what a disaster recovery plan is and the disaster recovery best practices.
What is a disaster recovery plan?
A disaster recovery plan is a strategy that organizations follow to help them get their network up and running quickly to resume work following a disaster.
Disasters such as cyberattacks, equipment failure, and natural disasters bring unplanned downtime to organizations.
However, implementing a disaster recovery plan can help your organization get back up and running quickly to avoid data loss, permanent network damage, and other consequences that can hinder the operation of your organization.
All organizations will eventually be subject to some sort of disaster and if you are not prepared with a disaster recovery plan, your organization will likely lose its functioning network.
A disaster can cause significant or irreparable damage if no disaster recovery plan is in place.
Additionally, organizations in certain industries are required to create and follow a disaster recovery plan as part of compliance standards set by their industry and may experience legal ramifications if not followed.
Not all telecom providers offer disaster recovery plans but most providers that do, cater these plans specifically to the organization and the industry they are in.
As a result, your organization should set up a disaster recovery plan that covers your specific needs.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about disaster recovery or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Disaster recovery best practices that can benefit your organization
Disaster recovery plans can improve your organization and help recover your network when disasters occur.
However, there are many best practices that your organization can follow when creating a plan to help resume work quickly after a disaster occurs. Disaster recovery best practices include:
Document your disaster recovery plan and recovery priorities
The most important best practice your organization should follow when creating a disaster recovery plan is documenting the plan.
Documenting each step in the process thoroughly will ensure a quick recovery. This documentation can also be used by your disaster recovery team to periodically test the plan for any weak spots.
In this document, it is important to identify all the applications that are used in your organization with their Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
The RTO is the estimated amount of time an application can be down without causing significant or irreparable damage to the network.
The RPO is the maximum age of files an organization must recover from backup storage for normal operations to resume after a disaster occurs.
Documenting the RTO and RPO of all applications will help determine which applications should or must be addressed first in the recovery process to avoid any consequences to your organization and its network.
Identify the personnel on your disaster recovery team
It is also important to identify the personnel on your recovery team and any other personnel who should be involved in the disaster recovery process and communicate the documented disaster recovery plan to them including their roles and responsibilities.
Key customer contacts, stakeholders, and sometimes legislative bodies that are legally required to be notified should all be included in the disaster recovery process.
IT staff can be helpful additions as well so they can provide valuable insight into the recovery strategy.
Test your disaster recovery plan
The greatest challenge when a disaster occurs is being unprepared because there are so many unforeseen scenarios that can disrupt your operations.
Testing your disaster recovery plan will provide insight into its vulnerabilities so your team can update the plan accordingly.
It is important to test your entire plan to work out any weaknesses within the plan to ensure your disaster recovery team knows their roles and how to perform them properly.
Developing a disaster recovery plan for your organization
Now you understand what a disaster recovery plan is and the disaster recovery best practices that your organization should follow. This will help you create a comprehensive disaster recovery plan for your organization.
Disasters such as cyberattacks, equipment failures, and natural disasters can have a detrimental impact on your network if your organization is not prepared to rectify the problems immediately.
Designing a disaster recovery plan will help that process go more smoothly and quickly. This will enable your organization to get back up and running with minimal consequences.
Coeo understands how important a disaster recovery plan is and has helped develop disaster recovery plans for thousands of organizations so they can make this process smoother following a disaster.
We want you to understand what a disaster recovery plan is and the best practices for developing one so you can develop a reliable plan that your organization can turn to when disasters occur in your organization.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about disaster recovery or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
