DO YOU HAVE A DR PLAN?

Why Don't you have a DR Plan?

NOT A PRIORITY / NO TIME

You don’t have to create a DR plan all at once. Build it gradually to save time in the future. Get different departments to chip in.

TOO EXPENSIVE

Disasters will happen. Murphy’s Law applies. An updated DR plan is like insurance, its benefits outweigh the costs of not having it. Some time you’ll need it, and you’ll be glad you had it!

DON’T KNOW HOW

It’s not rocket science. You could start from scratch tomorrow. Begin by taking stock of your IT “assets” and priorities.

What is the current state of your DR Plan?

THINGS HAVE CHANGED IN MY ORGANIZATION, BUT DOES MY PLAN NEED CHANGES TOO?

If your business environment has seen changes, you may need to keep pace with your DR plan. You may need to re-prioritize, or adjust recovery targets for your systems and data.

I KNOW IT’S OUT-OF-DATE. IT MAY NEED AN OVERHAUL!

If it’s old and needs updating, go through a checklist of your DR plan’s essential elements. Put your organization through a DR assessment. Map out improvements.

I’M NEW TO THIS. HOW DO I FIND OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE PLAN?

DR plans need to be current and tested regularly to maintain their value. Establish a maturity model comparing current vs. ideal DR capabilities.
$560,000
is the average cost of 8 hours worth of downtime4
$1,166.67
is the average cost of downtime per minute5

What's Your Disaster Recovery Plan?

The buck stops here. How do you feel when the lights first go out? Relief? An amusing distraction from the daily grind? In the dark office, you slowly come to realize that the issue is more serious. People are looking for direction. What is going on? Should I go home? The lights stay out. There must be a calm way to deal with this. Where’s your operations manager? Then the lights go back on; your PC’s rebooting. Phew! Catastrophe averted! Luckily, no one is hurt and there is no major damage. Business-as-usual within an hour!

It could have been worse. It was just a warning shot across the bow. No good back-up process; no written plan of attack. I’ve been there. Actually, I was the guy in-charge when the lights went out on August 14, 2003. The staff scurried home; the business shut down. Were other firms still working? We certainly weren’t, and it wouldn’t be good if we were on our own. That was the uncomfortable issue, to say the least. After that, I learned; my business learned. We were not going to be last, or caught unprepared again; we were going to have an option!

Our answer was to have a plan...

Not necessarily a “perfect plan”, but a plan nonetheless, with some people and hardware to back it up. The plan was something for us to use in moving forward and taking concrete action. We needed to take stock of what we had. We inventoried; we prioritized. It was a little stressful, but mostly eye opening. Focus turned to ubiquitous services, such as e-mail, document management and wireless devices, then on to communications and a recovery site. We learned a lot along the way, about cross-training staff, meshing the network, consolidating licenses, simplifying storage, documenting procedures, monitoring incidents better and negotiating good contracts. We cleaned house. Which is what everyone needs to do now and then, right? And that’s why I like doing Disaster Recovery work, because it touches everything! I’ve seen it up close, and that’s why I can help you.

To better understand what you need to do, consider the big picture. Figuring out your disaster recovery strategy is the beginning of an on-going process. In its simplest form, it’s a three-phase perpetual program. Depending on your circumstances, you may end-up re-assessing your situation and repeating these phases.

Works Cited

  1. PricewaterhouseCoopers: Cited in http://www.atlantic-it.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Atlantic-IT_v10n4.pdf
  2. Gartner: Cited in http://www.atlantic-it.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Atlantic-IT_v10n4.pdf
  3. Symantec: http://img2.insight.com/graphics/au/brands/symantec/better-backup-better-disaster-recovery.pdf
  4. Established from statistics provided by: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/02804.html
  5. Established from statistics provided by: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/02804.html