Disaster Recovery Plans
What is included in a disaster recovery plan?
A disaster recovery plan includes all the information your team (or a third party IT team, like knit) needs to get your business back online after something major goes wrong. Depending on your infrastructure, your disaster recovery plan may include:
- A list of critical servers, systems, and data your business needs to function
- Backup policies to prevent information loss A backup testing policy to ensure backups are valid and usable
- The amount of downtime your company is willing to accept as part of the disaster recovery process
What types of businesses need a disaster recovery plan?
Any business which relies on technology systems to generate revenue and operate their company needs to have a disaster recovery plan as part of your business continuity plan. Your business needs a disaster recovery plan if you:
- Store customer information and other data in a digital database
- Have a company website which helps customers and other stakeholders interact with your business
- Rely on the internet to accomplish daily tasks
- Would have to halt your business operations if your company’s computers, tablets, smartphones, wired phones, or other digital devices suddenly stopped working
How do you make a disaster recovery plan for a business?
Every business is unique, but the process of creating a disaster recovery plan is pretty straightforward. When we recently helped an environmental group develop their first business continuity plan, these were the steps we took:
- First, we worked with them to figure out how much time they could tolerate having their IT systems down before a disaster situation would impact their revenue generating activities.
- Based on these calculations, we developed a plan to back up and restore their systems within the acceptable downtime period.
- Then we implemented the preventative portions of their disaster recovery plan. The implementation included setting up backups for their IT systems both on-site and off-site, verifying those backups, and then testing the recovery procedures necessary for restoring all of their systems.
By establishing a business continuity plan,
- Our client has protected their primary source of revenue.
- This means they have secured an estimated $2.5 million in annual revenue for their business.
- Having a disaster recovery plan in place also helps our client build trust with investors.