No business is immune to disasters leading to many businesses developing measures to recover when disasters strike. Developing such measures is generally only accepted by some businesses. Although some can survive such a choice, research shows that more than 50% of businesses cannot survive a disaster without one.
Developing and continually testing a disaster recovery plan can protect data, recover operations, and decrease damage in case of a disaster. This article will extensively discuss disaster recovery, what constitutes a disaster, and how to develop a working plan.
Introduction to Disaster in Business
Generally, when people think about disasters in businesses, they think more of malware attacks and other cybersecurity threats like ransomware attacks and DDos. However, a disaster is any event that can abruptly stop business operations. It ranges from natural disasters such as hurricanes to systems/technical failure:
- Cybersecurity attacks such as malware and ransomware attacks
- Data or file losing
- Power outage
- Sabotage and equipment failure
- Industrial accidents
What is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery (DR) is the ability of a business to recover from any negative event that threatens or affects its operations. It involves preparing a disaster recovery plan after an in-depth analysis of the business to regain its critical systems and IT infrastructure, which contains guidelines to follow when disaster strikes. It also contains the following:
- Members on station when a disaster strikes
- IT assets, tools, and technologies
- A disaster recovery team
Why is Disaster Recovery Important?
Having a disaster recovery plan can afford businesses the following benefits:
It helps minimize interruption. Most disasters will prevent normal operation for a few hours to months if possible. However, with a disaster recovery plan imbibed into your business operation, it is possible to minimize such interruption if a disaster occurs. As a result, it is possible to continue business operations with minimum setbacks.
Limit damages. Disaster can also lead to damage. However, with a recovery plan, you can reduce the extent of damage and continue business operations.
Staff Preparation. A disaster recovery plan contains guidelines on what staff should do in case of a disaster. As a result, staff should have the required training on how to react in a disaster. Also, preparation and facing such issues would generate lower stress levels as the members have a clear action plan before the disaster strikes.
Restoration of services. A solid disaster recovery plan will give the necessary steps to restore business operations to a normal state quickly. Furthermore, businesses with a good plan would have a shorter Recovery Time.
Types of Disaster Recovery Solutions and Services
Choosing a disaster recovery strategy depends highly on the type of business and the IT infrastructure and assets to protect. Among the several disaster recovery solutions, common examples include:
Data Center Disaster Recovery. This strategy involves backing up data to a failover site at a secondary location in case of disaster. While useful, it only solves issues dealing with data loss. It does not provide the guidelines for recovery of other forms of operation. As a result, businesses incorporate other strategies besides the data center DR.
Network Disaster Recovery. This strategy aims for the business to maintain communication, application access, and data sharing during a disaster. Unlike the data center recovery, the strategy contains steps to restore network services, including voice, data, internet access and other network services. As a result, most businesses use both solutions together to minimize interruption after a disaster attack.
Cloud Disaster Recovery. Cloud disaster recovery is a critical component of any comprehensive disaster recovery plan. This strategy is better than a simple backup and requires implementing automatic workload failover to a public cloud when a disaster occurs. With cloud disaster recovery, businesses can ensure that their critical data and applications are protected and available in the event of a disaster, such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, or system failure. By leveraging cloud-based technologies like V2 Cloud, businesses can replicate their data and applications to a remote, secure location, where they can be quickly and easily recovered in the event of an outage. This approach provides a high level of protection against data loss and downtime, while also minimizing the need for expensive hardware and infrastructure. Cloud disaster recovery offers businesses a cost-effective, scalable, and reliable way to ensure business continuity in the face of unforeseen disasters or disruptions.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). DRaaS is a strategy that utilizes cloud computing to back up data to the cloud. The service provider replicates and hosts the organization’s virtual and physical servers on the cloud allowing an automatic backup of files before and when a disaster occurs. DRaaS is the most acceptable strategy as it takes a snapshot of data and assets according to a set time.
Building Your Disaster Recovery Plan
Step 1: Risk Assessment. Also known as risk analysis, this involves evaluating the potential risk the business can face and the possible outcome. The risk faced by businesses depends on the industry and geographic location. After risk assessment, you should have the following:
- Identify potential hazards
- Identify who and what the hazards will harm
- Create procedures that take these risks into account.
Step 2: Evaluate Critical Needs. This involves evaluating your business operation to determine operations critical to the business’s smooth running. Identifying such operations also depends on the types of business, product/service, and location. This will help in creating the guideline. To evaluate, find answers to the following questions :
- What part of my business does my business need to survive
- What information or data can put my clients at risks
- What data do I need to remain at the top of my game
Step 3: Create a Communication Plan. A communication plan is necessary for business continuity. It determines how information is being disseminated and how to carry out the developed action plan. A communication plan should also include emergency contact information for teams that help recover data.
Step 4: Develop a Data Backup and Recovery Plan. Develop a data backup plan to guard against data loss due to any disaster. Aside from that, using the previous evaluation and plans, create a disaster recovery plan that is relevant to your business. A disaster recovery plan would include:
- Data and equipment necessary for business operations
- Data recovery team contact information
- Meeting locations while the disaster persists
- Communication action steps
- Steps that employees must take for smooth operation while the disaster persists
Step 5: Test the Plan. The disaster recovery plan is theoretical. As a result, you need to test and revise it regularly. Regular testing is important to ensure that no gap can cause an interruption in the recovery process.
How V2 Cloud Can Help You Protect Your Business
For modern businesses, a disaster recovery plan is incomplete without cloud computing. While most will rely on the DRaaS, which also utilizes cloud computing, a broader cloud computing incorporation into the business IT infrastructure can be more efficient.
With V2 Cloud, employees can use computer resources provided on the secure cloud-hosted environment using any internet-enabled device. As a result, there is no data loss as employee work directly. Furthermore, V2 Cloud is very secure, reducing malware attacks and subscription-based, making it very cost-effective.
A disaster recovery plan aims to prepare a business for disasters by protecting its data and setting up several guidelines for resuming business operations with little or no interruption. As a result, businesses can recover data and decrease damage in a disaster. This article discussed disaster recovery, the types, and how to develop a working plan.
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