Businesses large and small store and move masses of data on employees, clients, and themselves. Most employees also rely on access to these files via their laptops, phones, tablets, and email. Should IT disaster strike and access to these services and stored data is lost, it can have a catastrophic impact on the bottom line of business.
In a recent survey we conducted, on average, our SMB customers said they experience nearly 62 hours of downtime each year. That’s a week and a half. Considering the potential cost of this downtime, you can see how important it is for small businesses to remain operational.
Small businesses have to plan for disasters and develop strategies to support IT disaster recovery. In this post, we’ll answer the following questions:
- What IT disaster recovery?
- What are the different stages of IT disaster recovery?
- What goes into planning your recovery should disaster strike?
What is an IT Disaster?
A disaster is the unplanned interruption of normal business processes. In IT terms, it means the disruption of IT infrastructure inside your business that impacts the way you operate. There are several scenarios that can qualify as a disaster. Arguably, the most damaging of all would be data loss. Whether it’s accidental or intentional loss or it’s the destruction of content where it’s stored, data is the hardest element of IT to replace (and often the most important thing a business must protect). Disaster recovery is a process of protecting operations before, during, and after a disaster. Businesses should consider backing up data before it is lost. Using a cloud storage system is an effective way of making sure all your data is kept in a safe, secure location.
Loss of IT components used to transport, process, and present data is another example of an IT disaster that could have catastrophic repercussions for businesses without an effective disaster recovery process. These could be caused by the destruction of key systems, network, or storage hardware or software. Even something as simple as a power outage can be extremely damaging — a loss of IT systems could have an impact on internal communications. It’s essential for businesses to be able to effectively collaborate when disaster strikes. Content collaboration tools will enable your recovery team to cooperate through a singular online platform, making an important difference to your recovery time.
IT Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity
IT disaster recovery is often confused with business continuity, which works on preventing such disasters, rather than the actual recovery process.
IT Disaster Recovery: Contained within a business continuity plan, the IT disaster recovery plan maintains and recovers a business.
Business Continuity: This is a business-wide review and implementation plan that ensures the continuation of critical business functions in the event of a disruption.
The process of returning to normal business functions after encountering one of these problems can have many potential issues. An IT disaster recovery plan must be detailed and well planned. Your technology recovery strategies should be developed to restore hardware, applications, and data in time to meet the needs of the business.
What is an IT Disaster Recovery Plan?
A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a collection of documents outlining well-planned actions designed to combat disaster before, during, and after a catastrophic event. This involves things such as prioritizing operations and processes, delegating roles for employees at the time of disaster, and collecting all the data you need to minimize damage.
The reason all small businesses should have an IT disaster recovery plan in place is to ensure minimal damage and to reduce the time it takes to return to normal operations. The stronger your IT disaster recovery plan is, the more likely you are to achieve this. It will save you both money and resources, as well as reduce the time you are unable to conduct business.
What Are the Stages of Disaster Recovery?
Even with a detailed plan in place, it’s important that you take an efficient approach to disaster recovery that will reduce both the cost of resources and time. Below are the different stages of disaster recovery and what you should be doing to maximize the effectiveness of your IT disaster recovery plan. If you are renting your office space, it would be worth checking with your landlord if there are any protocols should a disaster impact the property.
Risk Assessment
Carrying out a risk assessment is all about giving the best understanding of the potential damages caused by an IT disaster. Analyze your existing network structure, applications, databases, equipment, organization setup, and related details and carry out the following procedures:
- Trace the origin of the problem
- Assess the likelihood of further damage
- Discover the prime areas that have been affected
- Assess the damage
- Investigate what needs replacing
- Discuss the current state of the problem
- Gather the critical information you need
- Estimate the time you have available for dealing with the disaster
Recovery Team
Form a team that will assist in the entire disaster recovery operation. This is your disaster recovery team, and it should be made up of executives, managers, and department heads, with responsibilities across several offices, departments, or facilities. This all depends on the size of your business, but put simply, there should be someone to cover all areas of your business.
Who is involved in your recovery team depends on personnel and resources, but this team will be your experts if disaster strikes and will work to limit the damage when it does. You should delegate roles for each member and keep them notified of their duties. Your disaster recovery team will attend meetings and remain up to date with company policies.
Make sure they’re equipped with all the information they need to successfully implement the IT disaster recovery plan. This includes:
- Contact details
- Recovery time objective
- Communication methods at the time of disaster
- Alternative facility for the organization
- A master list of inventories
- Storage locations
- Customer/vendor forms and policies
Your recovery team oversees the allocation of roles, resources, and equipment. They will ensure the timeline, schedules, and operating and quality standards detailed by the risk assessment are kept to and that everyone effectively communicates throughout.
They also cover the review and reporting, which is in place to document the plan and asses any possible improvements to your recovery strategy.
Execution of Your Recovery Plan
This is where all the planning is put into action and the team begins executing recovery activities as lined out in the planning procedures. It’s essential throughout to refer to your recovery point objective (RPO) and recovering time objective (RTO).
RPO is the maximum age of files that an organization must recover from backup storage for normal operations to resume after a disaster. RTO is the maximum amount of time it takes an organization to recover these files from backup storage and resume normal operations.
These set out a strict deadline for the recovery process, and it’s essential that businesses understand the importance they have in IT disaster recovery.
Integration with Project Plan
IT disaster recovery isn’t carried out in isolation; it should align with the overall business plan. The plan must ultimately contribute towards to company’s overall objectives, so make sure it aligns with the ongoing management of resources and profitability.
Restoration and Reconstitution
This is the process of restoring normalcy once the disaster has been handled. This includes making sure there are no lasting effects and returning everyone to their original duties. Once this is complete, the recovery process is over.
To learn more about small and medium-business IT disaster recovery, read our Guide to SMB Disaster Recovery.
