Think about the ways your business uses technology every day. Your employees sign into Slack or email to communicate with each other and the rest of the world. You have a complex telephone system for inbound and outbound calling. Your sales team processes orders, which are sent to the factory electronically for manufacturing and then shipped to the customer. You have a network of desktops, laptops, servers, printers, copiers, routers and other devices to keep everything up and running.
And then one day…you don’t. A fire, water main break, tornado or some other disaster destroys your world. You must start over.
However, with the right disaster recovery plan, you can get your business up and running in a matter of a few minutes or hours. Below is the process we recommend to do so.
Seven Logical Steps to Developing a Manageable Recovery System
Establish Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).
This is the time in which a business process and its associated applications must be functional again after an outage event. They should fit into one of three tiers:
Tier 1: You need the application immediately and can’t run your business without it
Tier 2: You can go 8-24 hours without the app
Tier 3: It can be several days or weeks before you need that data
Mirror Tier 1 applications.
There are mission critical applications that make your business run every day. Those apps and the data that runs within them must be redundant at an offsite location that can be automatically switched to in the event of an outage. Since this is an expensive proposition, reserve this option only for those vital apps.
For those apps that don’t require mirroring, determine how often they will be backed up and to what format.
Is it daily, weekly, monthly or as they are used? Will they be backed up to tapes, cartridges, USB drives or the cloud?
Take a complete inventory of your hardware, software, and applications.
Make sure each computer has the current operating system, application, and anti-virus software levels. Record all make, models and serial numbers. For rental and leased equipment, record the vendor technical support contact and phone number. Determine when the systems were purchased or lease dates end. This will help in three ways:
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- Speed up your insurance claim
- Allow you to know what systems are needed for business continuity and
- Set up a schedule to retire and replace old equipment.
Have a variety of plans for your business and workforce.
If a hurricane hits your town, employees will require a few days to a few weeks to deal with their personal situation. If your building burns down and they need to work from home or a temporary location, you can be up and relatively soon.
Establish a workable communication plan.
Imagine an environment where the electricity is out, and the phone service is spotty. It’s important to have the physical address of each employee, their landline, cell phone, personal email address, and emergency contact information. You will need to have this data available on the cloud for your comm team.
Review your plan twice a year.
Make sure your RTO tiers are still relevant, changes within your inventory are noted and contact information is up to date.
JoLee Consultants Can Help with DR Planning
We provide an array of on-site and off-site cloud-based backup solutions with a disaster recovery plan customized to meet the needs of your business. Give us a call at (516) 208-2554 to learn more!