An underlying threat of disasters accompanies every single advancement in technology – so every innovation needs to come with a disaster recovery solution. It becomes even more crucial in 2021 when a good percentage of people globally are working remotely, heavily dependent on the power of cloud-based IT solutions and infrastructure.
The Need for Disaster Recovery strategies
Disasters affecting the IT ecosystem of an organization can have an impregnable impact on the business which is likely to face a financial crisis along with revenue losses. But, more than that, it could mean a loss of face in the market where winning the trust of customers and stakeholders can be a challenging task.
Many companies are forced to close shops and businesses as a result of such disasters disrupting their business models. Such disasters could be the beginning of long-drawn battles in the courtrooms. Such repercussions can leave the business strained of resources and is not the best way forward. Hence, every business organization must have a ready-to-use disaster recovery strategy and action plan in place.
Developing a practical disaster recovery plan
While developing a disaster recovery plan, an organization must keep in mind the following points to effectively implement DR in their organization:
- Understanding the difference between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans: Business continuity plans are contingency plans that help tackle an issue at the nip of the bud while Disaster recovery plans are on a larger scale and come into the picture after the initial risks subside, to implement restoring business functions and assets.
- Identifying the assets to be recovered: An organization must take proper stock of its complete IT assets that need to be part of the recovery plan.
- Prioritizing business systems – Files, applications, and data that are mission-critical for developing a tiered plan of action need to be prioritized.
- Assigning Responsibilities: The plan is incomplete without assigning the persons responsible for carrying out the said actions in a disaster recovery team. The effort should be to include people from all departments and levels within the organization.
- Defining the goals and the scope of the Disaster Recovery Plan: There is a need to define the goals and the scope of the DR plan. Technically, these are called the Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) which define the amount of data that can be lost and the time frame for which an application can be down before business is impacted.
- Plan for Backup: It is vital to choose the right backup option so that the business-critical data have secure backups to wade through difficult times. Choose cloud-based options or on-premise systems based on the business requirements.
- Test & Test: Keep testing the disaster recovery plan so that results can be assessed and finetuning done to understand the preparedness in case of an actual disaster.
- Include Experts: The changing scenario of the virtual world and the evolving technologies open newer dimensions for attackers to attack your IT ecosystem. It is imperative to ensure that all possible attack types are taken into account when making the disaster recovery plan.
An optimized disaster recovery plan for this decade should include the following components:
- Choose solutions that are based on the Disaster Recovery as a Service model. Effective and optimized, such solutions are made to keep the entire infrastructure safe and secure.
- Backup – 2021 and beyond demands a newer perspective – Choose the right backup strategy based on business needs along with cloud storage to ensure employees can seamlessly work remotely.
- Decide to go in for integrated cybersecurity and data protection solutions in 2021 to help mitigate risks profoundly.
- When deciding on Disaster Recovery strategies, be focused on AI and automation. The potential of AI is unfathomable and can be integrated well with cybersecurity solutions, while automation helps patch management and updates effectively.
- Organisation’s IT policies need a review and change. With most employees working remotely now, existing policies need to be reassessed to suit the current new work model.
- SaaS and remote solutions need to be updated and aligned with the need of the present times.
The essence of a Disaster Recovery Plan is to be proactive so that your mission-critical data are never compromised and are well-protected. If need be, it is advisable to speak to experts like scalong, who are leaders in offering robust security solutions that help safeguard the business from all types of ransomware by consulting and providing the appropriate disaster recovery solutions based on a business need.
Connect TODAY at info@scalong.com to discuss the DR strategy one–on–one !
