In case your computer ends up being victimized by Malware or any mechanical, human or natural disaster, a Disaster Recovery Plan will have you back up and running saving you valuable time and money.
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan? It is a plan that outlines the steps required to recover data in the event of a catastrophe happening to your IT infrastructure. Is a disaster plan right for your small business? Every company should have some form of disaster recovery plan in place. Anytime data is critically lost it means a loss of both time and money for your business. Your technology infrastructure holds vital information for your company pertaining to vendors, customers and employees. While you might not need an elaborate recovery plan, all companies should have some type of plan in place. Here are some ideas to help get you started.
Start by assessing your risks. Disasters can happen from theft, malfunctions, fire, employee neglect, weather related issues and a plethora of other reasons. View the likelihood of the threats you’ve identified and start to build a plan based off of your risks.
Make sure your plan is well documented. Outline procedures and steps to take in case of a disaster. Keep important details such as location of back up discs, numbers for your information technology vendors and important passwords in your document. Familiarize key staff and/or your outside IT service providers with this document in case you are away so the recovery process begins as soon as possible. Review your plan on a quarterly basis to keep your staff and/or IT service provider up to date on your policies and procedures.
Always have a back up! Back ups are essential for your piece of mind. The more redundancy you have in your system, the less likely you are to have failure.
Copy your data to tapes and store it at a secondary location to protect it from physical damage or loss. Just think, if a fire burned down your business not only do you lose your computer and all of its data but your back up tapes as well. How often should you back up? This depends on the information getting stored into your system. Think about its value to your company – if the information is important to your business and the cost to replace the information is high, back it up. Also check to make sure your back ups are working and have been copied properly. Regularly test your back up and replace your tapes every 6 months.
Whether it is a small interruption or something that can shut your business down for days, a Disaster Recovery Plan is essential. Make sure you assess your risks, make policies and procedures and create back up files. Don’t wait until it is too late; create a disaster recovery plan today.
