When it comes to the somewhat uncomfortable subject of disaster recovery, there are three main questions that concern most business owners and managers. Knowing the answers can help your organization recover quickly and effectively from IT disasters.
What Do We Do With Our DR Plan Documents?
Your organization needs an updated, all-inclusive Disaster Recovery Plan in an accessible document file. Why? Primarily so that everyone on your organization’s DR team knows what to do when needed. While it is not necessary to have complete detail about all your systems, hardware, software and other technical elements in this document, your DR team must have 24/7 access to information detailing the sequencing, staging and individual roles involved in the recovery effort – so they don’t have to think about it at the time.
The DR documentation needs to be secure and protected from the same threats that may strike your main site to ensure you can access it even when your systems are compromised. Store it in a neutral location, available through Internet access, and keep it completely up-to-date.
How Do We Justify The Cost Of DR?
Paying for a DR plan is a lot like paying for insurance. As a business, you have to ask the same kinds of questions: Are the threats to us real? How much damage will happen to us if the threat is realized? Will we be able to recover quickly without losing too much business?
Your organization needs to measure the value of the DR plan against the potential losses incurred should disaster strike and the probability of these events actually happening. You can then weigh that against eh costs of your program. It’s a classic risk-management evaluation.
There’s an old IT bromide that says data should be “current, consolidated, centralized and cleaned-up”, and this is especially true in the time of disaster. When you are scrambling to restore your organization’s operations, you certainly don’t want to encounter a situation in which your DR data is out-of-date, scattered or disorganized.
As for the costs associated with maintaining the currency of a DR plan, imagine your organization as a garden, constantly growing and changing. You can’t stand back and watch it change: you need to act upon it, whether it needs fertilizing or watering. The same can be said for your DR plan; it requires constant vigilance and care in order to remain effective.
What Does This DR Terminology Mean?
Common DR terms such as failover, fallback, RTO, RPO, BIA, gap analysis often cause executives to panic. IT workers use jargon because it enables them to say a lot in as few words as possible. However, your DR consultant should be sensitive to the fact that your organization is not solely comprised of IT experts, and he or she should be able to convey the complex ideas of DR preparedness to a wide audience. For a list of common DR terms and their definitions, see our glossary list.
When it comes to creating and maintaining an effective DR plan, ensure that a detailed outline of this plan is available as an internet-accessible document at all times – especially when the rest of your systems are down. Support your plan with a carefully measured DR maintenance budget and a basic understanding of typical DR jargon and your route to emergency preparedness will be far less onerous.
