If you’re serious about establishing a Disaster Recovery plan for your organization, you need not only the buy-in from your own team, but also the support of your partners and service providers.
Education Is The Key
In today’s uncertain business climate nobody wants to throw a dollar away. You need to be able to convince your colleagues that DR will yield a payback, and it’s not always a simple sell.
The truth is, real threats exist. Stories of catastrophic events affecting businesses are not hard to find; both historic and current examples abound, perhaps even in your own backyard. Provide some relevant case studies in crisis management and insurance forecasts to persuade your peers of today’s realities.
Your colleagues need to know how many smart organizations already employ DR planning. It’s an easier sell if you’re in an industry where compliance and regulatory requirements raise DR expectations.
But even if you’re not in one of those industries, you can make a powerful case for risk mitigation. Weighing the cost of a DR assessment against the probabilities of a catastrophic event can be a sobering experience. Stakeholders need to know that even a short-term operations shutdown can have long-term effects on your business relations, partnerships and customer base.
Get Your Partners And Service Providers On Board Too
If you’re going to spend your resources getting your organization DR-ready, you certainly don’t want to be held up by a service provider hit by a catastrophic event.
For instance, perhaps you’re using a cloud-based service provider for your DR, or for document storage or email. Do you have any assurances that they won’t abruptly go down and compromise your data? Do your service providers keep backup copies of your data or use redundant facilities to protect it?
Maybe they automatically replicate your database, or create a cross-region replica, which demonstrates DR capabilities to your partners and stakeholders and ensures your business continuity. How do you know? It is your responsibility to ask your service providers for guarantees of availability and resiliency.
A DR plan is only as strong as its weakest link. It is in your best interest not only to have everyone in your organization buy in to the merits of a solid DR plan, but also your close affiliates as well, to protect the entire scope of critical operations.
