Stay Prepared by Refreshing Your IT Disaster Recovery Plan

It’s Time to Update Your Disaster Recovery Plan

In recent years, businesses have faced an unprecedented range of challenges, underscoring the importance of proactive preparedness. It’s more critical to anticipate and plan for potential business problems than ever. The pandemic challenged organizations and IT networks to adapt quickly, as remote work became the new normal in many industries. Businesses prepared to adapt rapidly were able to pivot with minimal loss of income.

In addition, natural disasters are an ever-present threat. Wildfires, tornados, and other extreme weather events are on the rise and becoming more destructive. These evolving threats highlight the need for companies to be prepared for unforeseen crises and disruptions.

The frequency and impact of cyberattacks are another area of concern. 59% of companies worldwide suffered a ransomware attack. This is particularly alarming, as only 55% of organizations have a disaster response plan in place.

Businesses must mitigate their risk and plan for minimal downtime. Resilience lies in having a comprehensive and up-to-date disaster recovery strategy built on a realistic risk assessment, operational analysis and a detailed, well-tested disaster response plan.

To ensure your business is adequately prepared, creating a disaster response plan and actively maintaining it with periodic reviews – at least once a year – as your IT environment changes. With a sound preparedness strategy and frequent updates, your business will stay ready for any disaster that may arise.

Start with a Realistic Risk Assessment

A solid disaster recovery plan starts with a realistic risk assessment of specific threats your business faces. These risks are constantly evolving, which is why it’s best practice to conduct risk assessments on a regular basis — at least annually. If it’s been a while since your last assessment, begin by identifying vulnerabilities in your IT systems, networks, security, hardware, and data storage etc. Are your hardware or servers nearing end of life? Older equipment can pose unique security risks that require more vigilant protocols.

Assess hardware & operating systems integrity regularly to prevent vulnerabilities from outdated technology. Research and evaluate emerging risks in the cyber threat landscape that can impact your company. It is essential to integrate strategies that address emerging trends in your disaster recovery plan.

Weather patterns and other environmental risks also deserve careful consideration. For example, are experts predicting severe thunderstorms or flooding in your area? Is your organization vulnerable to natural disruptions? As you read the news of wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes across the U.S., ask yourself how your organization might deal with similar circumstances. By facing the possibilities head on, you and your team can begin to prioritize readiness.

Operational Analysis: Building Business Resilience

The next critical step in disaster recovery planning is conducting an operational analysis. This allows you to evaluate day-to-day operations and identify new risks that may have emerged. Establish standardized procedures and documentation for onboarding and offboarding employees. For instance, once employees leave your company, ensure that all their accounts are deactivated. If your workforce is transitioning back to the office or adopting a hybrid model, have a plan in place to track both physical assets and online activities.

This analysis should also extend to your data backup systems. Are backups stored in geographically remote locations and the cloud? How quickly can you restore critical data and applications if disaster strikes? Regularly testing data backups and ensuring you have a full inventory — by both status and location — is essential for mitigating risk. Don’t rely solely on cloud storage. Prepare contingencies in case you lose access to your cloud-based backup systems.

Align your disaster recovery plan with current compliance standards to ensure it meets evolving regulations. As part of this analysis, consider performing a data and application criticality assessment. Companies in the medical industry, for instance, must comply with HIPAA requirements stating IT systems be prioritized based on their importance. It’s a prudent model that all organizations can follow. Identify which applications and systems must be restored immediately following a disruption and which can wait a few hours, or even days. By defining a clear hierarchy, you can more easily set priorities for teams and ensure recovery efforts will focus on critical operations first to minimize disruption. Be sure to communicate these priorities with everyone on your recovery team and maintain transparent reporting procedures and documentation.

Updating, Refining Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Once your risk assessment and operational analysis are complete, it’s time to update your disaster recovery plan. Our ebook, Five Steps for Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience, provides a helpful overview of what to consider. If you already have a plan in place, that’s great—just remember, an outdated plan can be as detrimental as having no plan at all. Unless it’s actionable and provides clear direction for team members, your plan will not serve your organization should disaster strike.

To ensure your organization is ready for any disaster, review and update your plan annually based on changes in your business operations and the broader risk landscape. Aim to modify your plan each time your environment changes – for instance, when changes are made to hardware or network configurations.

Establish regular communication to ensure your disaster recovery team is up to date. Staff turnover can leave gaps in your team’s expertise. It’s essential to review and update team assignments regularly to reflect current staff. Distribute and maintain an updated organizational chart so you can easily identify replacements for team members who leave the company or move into new roles.

Establish a cross-functional team that represents all major business units and leadership. Additionally, cross-train team members so that each is capable of (and responsible for) filling multiple roles if needed. Redundancy is an invaluable asset in times of disaster and recovery.

Keep contact information for team members up to date and circulate it. One helpful practice is to have each department maintain a customer and employee contact list, identifying who they are responsible for contacting in an emergency. You might also provide each member with a laminated card containing contact information for all team members to ensure quick phone communication in a crisis.

Many organizations find it useful to have multiple ways of payment. Consider identifying alternative workarounds for placing orders or making payments. If necessary, once these channels are in place, your business will be able to continue functioning even under challenging circumstances should business channels get disrupted.

Testing Your Plan and Building Teamwork

Before finalizing or updating your disaster recovery plan, it’s essential to test it. Gather your updated disaster recovery team and run through a variety of scenarios. Tabletop exercises and real-time simulations provide a valuable opportunity for team members to collaborate, identify weaknesses, and refine their responses to potential crises. It’s best to draw from real-world scenarios and use current risks—such as the latest cyber threats or climate events—as the basis for these tests. This ensures that your plan remains practical and relevant.

In addition to testing the plan itself, plan annual or quarterly security awareness training for all employees that include updates to disaster recovery protocols. Familiarize on-site employees with evacuation routes, emergency contact points, and how to reach team members in case of a disaster. Remote workers may require different protocols, including printed instructions to follow if web-based communications are inoperable.

Redundancy and Due Diligence are Key to Mitigating Risk and Downtime

When selecting a cloud disaster recovery vendor, redundancy is crucial to ensuring business continuity. A reliable provider should offer geographically distributed data centers, real-time replication, and automated failover with live support to minimize downtime. Regular testing and due diligence help verify that your disaster recovery solution functions as expected, reducing the risk of data loss or prolonged outages and meeting Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) requirements. By leveraging a cloud-based disaster recovery solution, businesses can enhance resilience while optimizing costs, opposed to maintaining a fully integrated and redundant physical site.

Rely on Experts, Not Intuition

As businesses become more data-driven and interconnected, preparedness is now a vital part of protecting an organization’s value. Even the most experienced IT professionals can benefit from additional consulting to make sure your planning follows best practices and leverages the most current solutions.

A partner like RenovoData, experienced in serving businesses in every vertical, can deliver invaluable insights to help your IT team identify and address vulnerabilities to avoid costly downtime. Whether you need a complete cloud backup solution or ancillary services to augment an already robust resilience plan, RenovoData can help you meet your recovery goals.

Experience the difference that RenovoData can make for your organization with cloud backup, Server Recovery, DRaaS, and Hosted Solutions coupled with ongoing tactical recovery services. Schedule a call to discuss how we mitigate risks and downtime. Call 1.877.834.3684 or email us at info@renovodata.com.