Aligning with a DR partner can be one cost-effective solution to protect your organization against the risks of potential disaster. But how do you find the right one? There are three things you must do before selecting a DR partner to properly evaluate candidate organizations and make an informed choice. Follow this three-step checklist to ensure you have all the information you need before you seal a long term deal.
1. Conduct Research: Offerings and Outsourcings
The first step is to examine the scope of the services the candidate offers to ensure it aligns with your list. You want to make sure that DR is their primary focus and not an add-on to other services, and you also want to verify they just don’t flip a number of key DR-oriented services to other third parties – you will have even less control! Look for assistance in attaining your own certifications (e.g. ISAE 3402, ISO 22301) and check to see if they provide resources such as tips, techniques, and other useful content. You’ll want assurance that they are DR experts, but have a grounded understanding of your business realities, such as budget and flexible grow-shrink options.
Check that the potential DR partner offers a full range of potentially-useful services, including:
- “Integrated” (coordinated) DR and BC services.
- Choice of:
- Cloud services: they manage on their equipment on their site.
- Fully managed services: they manage your systems on their site.
- Co-location services: you manage your systems on their site.
- Data back-up services: you keep just your data on their site.
- Tools and software to monitor and manage recovery systems and processes.
- Methods, templates, and tools for plan development and maintenance.
- Workspace for the recovery team, as well as an optional, separate area for business teams.
- Mobile service: a mobile trailer housing DR work area and facilities.
- Both wired and wireless notification systems to protect against problematic issues with your primary communications systems or with the facility systems, and to ensure recovery communications will be activated with your team if and when they are needed.
- Access to your systems and your data, on-demand, and onsite at the time of disaster.
- Access during move in/move out, tests, upgrades, etc.
- Skilled resources for plan assessment, development, and maintenance.
2. Tour The Facility: Security and Conditioning
You can get a good sense of the quality of a service provider by seeing it in action. Ideally, you will bring a property management and/or a security expert along to your inspection for another set of eyes. As you tour, look for answer to the following questions:
- Is physical access to the facility strictly controlled?
- How does the provider handle other customers / visitors/ workers onsite? Do they segregate and supervise the important areas?
- How do they protect the infrastructure and conditioning of the facility, including heating/cooling, water, power, and waste? Do they have raised floors in the equipment rooms?
3. Check References: Customers and Certifications
If possible, talk to other customers about their experience with the DR service. Ask:
- What services are they currently using?
- How well does the candidate serve their entire program lifecycle?
- What lessons have they learned since working with this DR partner – be it about DR in general, or how to best leverage the partner itself?
- Were there any unexpected costs or risks introduced as a result?
You should also look for independent verification of the service’s practices, such as third-party audits or certifications (e.g. data center hardening, security, IT/DR practices).
Remember, you are entrusting this service with the care of your data and systems: the lifeblood of your organization. It is crucially important to make sure that they are up to the task before you enlist them as your partner. With this three-step checklist, you can verify that their offering meets your needs and criteria, that their facilities are up to par, and that their customers – managers at organizations like yours – are satisfied with the level of service they’ve received. If any one of those three checklist items fails to meet your standards, keeping looking.
