Disaster Recovery

It has been estimated that 9 out of 10 companies who experience a “disaster” (e.g. total loss of systems) and have no Disaster Recovery (DR) plan do not survive the following year. Yet a DR plan is still not as important by many companies. Key considerations in a DR plan are listed below. BII Compliance can help to automate these tasks to reduce the stress of having to implement a DR plan.

Work Area

In the event of a loss of work area (e.g. office burned down, etc) new or temporary premises must be arranged.

Backup

It is very important that a backup strategy is designed, adhered to, and checked on a regular basis.

Deployment

In the event of a disaster, one of the first steps will be to rebuild the systems in the way they were created prior to the disaster.

Restoration

Once the systems have been rebuilt as part of the deployment phase, data and settings need to be restored from the backups taken.

Communication

Lines of communication (e.g. e-mail, etc) should be re-established as soon as possible to get the company back up and running again as soon as possible, to minimise the damage done to the business.

Security

The implementation of a DR plan is not an everyday task for any company. It is done in a hurry under emergency conditions. This often leads to corners being cut and can leave the company vulnerable to security issues.

Testing

A DR plan should be tested from time to time, in the same way that buildings have fire drills. A company with a DR plan which they test regularly stands a high chance of surviving a disaster.