In the aftermath of recent disasters, natural or man-made, preparing for the unexpected is again taking centre stage as organisations look to protect that which matters most, people and information.

In order to stay afloat, even during disasters, plans need to be carefully prepared, documented and tested in order to ensure continuity of operations. In times like this it is easy to appreciate the reliance we have on our computer systems and data, but for many who have not considered Disaster Recovery (DR) planning it’s all too late!

1. What would you do if a storm flooded your computer room?
   
   
2. Or how would you respond if a power outage blacked out your servers?
   
   
3. How would you recover your data and keep the business running after an unforeseen disaster?

Whatever the size of your company, DR planning should be a serious consideration. Many companies consider DR to be expensive, this is not necessarily the case, and in most cases insignificant when comparing against the potential loss of revenue in the event of an IT outage.

Whether you are an organisation of just 10-15 staff or a national corporation, successful DR planning will assist you in providing a seamless business function to your customers, and ultimately help you stay in business.

The key to surviving such an event is a business continuity strategy, a set of policies and procedures for reacting to and recovering from an IT-disabling disaster, and the main component of a business continuity strategy is a disaster recovery plan (DRP).

 

Many Disaster Recovery products offered by IT companies are excessively expensive when compared with the realistic chances of a major, systems wide disaster. These ‘full systems DR’ plans end up absorbing IT budgets and restrict growth of key operational day-to-day infrastructure.

At PSU we can offer a tailored solution targeting the principal business critical servers, offering a range from 24 – 72 hour systems restores. We realise that any DR plan is an insurance policy and offer different levels of cover to suit different budgets. By analyzing your current systems and tailoring a DR plan to your needs we can give you the best disaster protection for your budget.

In reality perhaps the smaller companies are the ones most at risk. As with any company a small business relies heavily on its data. However the irony is that this is one of the most neglected areas in a small businesses IT strategy. In a recent survey 50% of small businesses did not have a adequate data backup solution.

As an example PSU could commit to deliver a DR plan and complete the installation and data restore within 72 hours of a major failure of your critical servers. Other organisations may be happy with having partial IT services restored in these time frames. i.e email and customer data restoration.

In essence, this example would involve PSU holding suitable hardware that will be brought to site and connected to the existing network. Operating System and Application backup tapes will be restored and a working system handed back to the users within agreed timescales.

 

Step 1: Risk Analysis
The first step in drafting a disaster recovery plan is conducting a thorough risk analysis of your computer systems. List all the possible risks that threaten system uptime and evaluate how imminent they are in your organisation. Anything that can cause a system outage is a threat, from relatively common manmade threats like virus attacks and accidental data deletions to more rare natural threats like floods and fires. Determine which of your threats are the most likely to occur and prioritise them using a simple system: rank each threat in two important categories, probability and impact. In each category, rate the risks as low, medium, or high.

Step 2: Budget
Once you've figured out your risks, ask 'what can we do to suppress them, and how much will it cost?' Can I detect a threat before it hits? How do I reduce the potential of it occurring? How do I minimize its impact to the business? For example, a small organisation could employ an emergency power supply to mitigate its power outage threat and have all its data backed up daily on backup tapes, which are stored at a remote site in case of a disaster. The more preventative measures you establish upfront the better.

 

 

Step 3: Develop the Plan
The recovery procedure should be written in a detailed plan." Establish a Recovery Team from among the your staff or appoint a third party IT maintainer. Define how to deal with the loss of various aspects of the network (databases, servers, bridges/routers, communications links, etc.) and specify who arranges for repairs or reconstruction and how the data recovery process occurs. The document will also outline priorities for the recovery. What needs to be recovered first?

Step 4: Test the Plan
Once your DRP is set, test it frequently. Eventually you'll need to perform a component-level restoration of your critical server to get a realistic assessment of your recovery procedure, but a periodic walk-through of the procedure with the Recovery Team will assure that everyone knows their roles. Test the systems you're going to use in recovery regularly to validate that all the pieces work. Always record your test results and update the DRP to address any shortcomings.

 

 

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