When Do I Need A Disaster Recovery Plan For My Company?

There are many questions that may arise when an individual embarks on a new business venture. Whether the individual is starting a new business or revamping an old business, there are certain steps that should be taken to protect the individual's investment in their company and ensure that business can continue as usual in the event that something adverse happens to affect the business. Many individuals have turned to using a disaster recovery plan to ensure the fast implementation of procedures that will help a business recover and continue to satisfy clients if anything happens to affect the business. So when is a disaster recovery plan needed for a company? Preferably, the company should have a disaster recovery plan in place before a disaster strikes.

A disaster recovery plan is an outline created by the principals of a company, or those they choose to hire, to detail how a business will deal with any potential disaster that may occur. This may include any adverse events from server failure to an earthquake leveling the building. Because a true disaster is typically unforeseen, it is best for the company to have a disaster recovery plan in place prior to a disaster occurring within the company. The disaster recovery plan will outline the steps that need to be taken to ensure that the customers will be taken care of in a timely manner and return the business to operation as quickly as possible.

A proper disaster recovery plan will need to be formed only after an intense review of business practices has been conducted. Any business procedures that are found to be ineffective or unneeded can be corrected at this time. By focusing on the business methods that bring results and including them in the disaster recovery plan, the business will be focused on completing the steps that will bring the best results if any type of adverse event affects the course of business. The disaster recovery plan may cover several different types of disasters and the steps that may be needed to recover from each.

There are many types of businesses that could benefit from having a disaster recovery plan, but many business owners either believe that a disaster recovery plan is not necessary or they put off creating, implementing, and testing a plan for so long that a disaster strikes and disrupts their business before they have a plan put into place. This is the catalyst that many business owners need before they decide to create a disaster recovery plan, but unfortunately much damage could be done and much revenue lost because a disaster recovery plan was not in place before the disaster occurred.

Disaster Recovery Planning - Mitigating Data Loss in Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Disaster recovery planning; also commonly referred to as 'business continuity planning' involves planning for the possibility of an event that causes the loss or destruction of data. It also involves ensuring that a recovery plan is in place so that the business can recover and continue should the disastrous event occur. When it comes to disaster recovery planning more than half of all small and medium-sized businesses lack a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. While almost everyone understands the need to have insurance policies to protect their assets there is often a certain disconnect when it comes to planning for the protection of the data that resides on their computer systems. After all, what good is having the insurance company buy you a new computer if the data that you need to run your business is gone? Many also focus on the word 'disaster' and assume that it refers to an act of god or some other rare occurrence and count themselves safe; after all, what are the chances that the earth is going to open up and swallow their computer systems, right? This however is badly misguided in that the 'disaster' we are referring to in the disaster recovery plan can be any of the following occurrences:

    Hard drive failure
    Operator error leading to the corruption or deletion of data
    Theft
    Sabotage by current or former employees
    Software errors leading to the corruption of data
    Flood or Fire
    Electrical damage

Now that we have established some of the many different ways that data loss events can occur we need to cover the steps that can be taken to ensure that the data can be recovered so that business operations can continue in the event that data is damaged, deleted or otherwise destroyed. One also needs to be careful not to assume that simply subscribing to one of the many online backup solutions (Carbonite, Dr. Backup, etc) amounts to a disaster recovery plan. It's worth noting that doing something is better than nothing so if you are not committed or otherwise able to develop a disaster recovery plan then an online backup system is still going to be better than nothing, but one should be careful not to develop a false sense of security since an online backup program is by no means a full disaster recovery plan. Creating a comprehensive disaster recovery plan involves the following:

    Documenting business processes. It is important to fully document all important business processes and determine where and how the data for each is stored.
    Planning the right backup solution. Simply running backups is often not enough- are databases involved? Most databases can't be recovered from the simple copy of files that is included in a normal backup procedure so databases need to be looked at separately and individually to ensure the backup system that is implemented is actually going to be able to recover them.
    Implementing the backup solution. Once a backup plan is created the hardware and/or software involved needs to be acquired and set up accordingly.
    Testing. Tests will need to be done to ensure that the backups being made work and are able to restore the data.
    Monitoring of the backup solution. Monitoring essentially a never-ending process since there is near 100% certainty that the something will cause the backups to fail at some point and require a human intervention to get them running again.