Medical | Disaster Rally

What Is Disaster Recovery and What Can You Do Yourself?

In case of a natural or human-induced disaster striking an area, the fast recovery from the unfortunate event is a priority for everyone. The recovery must optimally be realized with as little human and financial costs possible so that the area can resume its previous state and even be better prepared and less vulnerable to similar future events. So, what is disaster recovery as officially defined and provided by various services and organizations? There are two main sides to this recovery: the humanitarian part, referring to people and communities and which is usually known as disaster relief, and the part focusing on ensuring the survival and continuity of a business, usually known as disaster recovery.

Sometimes, the two terms are used interchangeably, since they aren’t that different in meaning, but for the sake of differentiating between the two types of disaster management services, a great part of the world has started respecting this distinction between disaster relief and disaster recovery. Our present article will focus on clarifying the disaster recovery aspect for businesses, and also, address some FAQs about disaster recovery along the way.

What is Disaster Recovery?

Disaster recovery can be defined as a set of procedures and policies set in place in order to ensure the continuance of infrastructure (and/ or of business activity) in the aftermath of disruptive events. The more the world came to rely on technological infrastructure, the more we started to realize how vulnerable we would be left in case this infrastructure failed, and since the 70s, disaster recovery systems have been specifically created to assist with this issue.

Since disaster recovery focuses first and foremost on ensuring the restoration of IT and technological infrastructure and data, it represents only a subset of the more general business continuity systems. These comprise of a vaster array of policies which ensure other aspects required for an activity to be resumed (finding alternate office space, financial recovery from damages and so on).

As businesses started realizing their huge dependence on IT technologies (and especially since internet speed and real-time response became an integrative part of almost any business), services which offer disaster management and recovery have become more and more popular and needed. So, what is disaster recovery from this point of view, of commercial services marketed and offered to IT-reliant businesses? Usually, all service providers specializing in disaster recovery for businesses offer this:

Full cloud storage and online backup for your business information, data, sensitive data like login details and company track records etc.;
An initial evaluation of the risk your business faces in case of disaster and tips on how to minimize that risk;
A disaster recovery plan to be activated in the wake of a disruptive event, prescribing the client (the business trying to protect itself from disaster) the steps to follow for continued functionality and on to a full recovery;
The availability of limited office space and computer systems to allow the affected business to resume its activity at least partially until their workspace is restored;
A cyber security diagnostic in case the disaster was not caused by a natural event (like an earthquake or a tornado and so on), but by a specific cyber-attack which led to a potentially dangerous breach;
Various service packs offering increasing levels of assistance with the aftermath of the disruptive event.

Disaster Recovery FAQs

1. What Is Disaster Recovery for Businesses Beyond the Backup Service?

Initially, disaster recovery service providers focused mostly on cloud storage backup, but today’s service packs offer much more than that. First, they diagnose the specifics of the business that is trying to protect itself from disaster, then they formulate some options and service packs adapted to suit the needs of that business. This can include everything IT-related, like ensuring a preservation of layers of access according to the company’s hierarchy and so on, but also non-IT services. Such non-IT services can include the provision of office space and minimal infrastructure required for the business to get back into work, even if for the time being the company is still dealing with the aftermath of disaster and its actual office space and work environment and compromised.

2. What Other Aspects of Disaster Recovery Should I Consider as a Business Leader?

You should consider disaster recovery beyond the simple aspects of cloud storage, as well as depending on the specifics of the business you are running. After all, what is disaster recovery if not a tailored approach meant to get your company back in business as soon as possible? A few general ideas useful to all businesses would be these: increasing the security and diminishing the risk of data loss, protecting both your physical and virtual assets with the help of comprehensive insurance, and creating reliable procedures for getting back on track as fast as possible.

3. What Is Disaster Recovery as Business Continuation and What Services Should I Look Into?

As mentioned above, disaster recovery confined to IT and cloud backup is but a small aspect of protecting your company and ensuring your business continuation. This second concept is a more loosely defined set of services and measures, impossible to pin down because the nature of each business can be drastically different and, therefore, the business continuation plan must be adapted to each individual case. There are usually three levels of a sound business continuation plan:

Resilience: the purpose of these measures is to minimize the damage and ensure that the business activity can continue up to a certain point in spite of the disruptive event;
Recovery: the purpose of these procedures is to ensure a fast recovery of the degree of functionality lost in the disaster and bring the activity back to full capacity;
Contingency: Ensuring that the people and the infrastructure of the business become more flexible and able to cope with unforeseen aspects of whatever disruptions and disasters may come. This third layer of measures and procedures is meant first and foremost to deal with the potential inadequacy of the first two (the resilience and recovery plans and measures). To increase the effectiveness of contingency, this part of the business continuation strategy must also include the thorough testing of the other parts of the plan.

What Can You Do Yourself For a Better Disaster Recovery?

First of all, as a business owner or leader you should try to familiarize yourself as much as possible with the actual risks you are facing in case of the various types of disasters which can strike your business. Identify your potential losses and this way you will know exactly what your protection priorities should be. If you’re not sure how to identify security risks yourself, don’t worry: it’s quite common to enlist the services of a disaster recovery consultant in this stage of planning.

The bottom line is to start asking yourself not simply ‘what is disaster recovery?’, but increasingly ‘what should my business recovery plan contain?’ Consultants from the recovery service provider you will hire can only help you with the technical details you may not be aware of, but only you can intimately know the priorities and vital functions of your business, so you are in the end the most qualified planner for your business continuity.

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Top 7 Disaster Recovery Services Needed

When a disaster, natural or otherwise, strikes a place, community, or business, it may very well feel like all is ended and there can be no recovery. But it is crucial that the aftermath of the disaster to be one of careful consideration and wise choices so that there can be a restoration of the highest possible degree. Recovering from a disaster or a disastrous situation is hard, but not impossible, and with the help of disaster recovery services it can now be more manageable than ever.

Our overview of the top disaster recovery services will let you know exactly what type of help you should look into before the unfortunate event, for people, communities and businesses alike. We will put a special emphasis on disaster recovery services for businesses and small businesses in particular since this type of services and less well-known and the smaller companies can usually go down forever in the aftermath of a disaster.

A. What Disaster Recovery Services Are Most Needed?

In the aftermath of a natural (or artificial) disaster, emergency intervention teams are always on the move and striving to help as much as possible, but even these specialists have their limits. The cooperation, help and even the preparedness of those needing help is crucial to the success of the disaster management teams. Whether the disaster is a natural one like a tornado, big storm, flash-flood or earthquake, or an artificial one like a terrorist attack, the involvement of bystanders is vital. In most cases, the general public must truly get involved in the recovery missions if anything along those lines is to succeed.

Still, knowing when to stand aside and let the professionals do their job is also of the upmost importance. Disaster relief teams are not only well-trained on the type of challenges which come with unfortunate events, but they are also equipped with the required infrastructure and intervention kits. To get a better overview of how disaster recovery services work, here is a brief list of the top most important such services, in the areas of humanitarian help and in the area of business recovery as well.

Disaster Recovery Services for People and Communities

1. Firefighter Services

Almost all types of natural disasters also cause the occurrence of fires, but that’s not all the reason for which firefighting teams are of vital importance in disaster relief. Their main quality is that they are also trained and qualified to find people who remain trapped under rubble, which is one of the leading causes of death in the aftermath of disasters.

2. Danger Removal Intervention Teams

These experts are usually sent in to neutralize all traces of danger still looming in the aftermath of a disaster, whether the issue at hand is electric wires gone wild, a potential explosive material or a building about to collapse.

3. Humanitarian Relief Work

After the first two priority services presented above, teams handling all other aspects of disaster relief come in. This includes providing people with food and water, medical help, shelter and clothing, as well as helping family members find each other through the chaos.

4. Resilience Training Teams

When the immediate life-threatening danger has passed, another type of experts are ideally brought in, with the mission of helping the community rise back to its feet. Their areas of training include restoring a livelihood to the community and reducing further risk.

Disaster Recovery Services for Businesses

How about disaster recovery service (usually abbreviated to DRS) for business owners (LTD ventures)? For preventing an unfortunate event from proving to be fatal to your enterprise, these are the most important services (we will continue the numbering of the top from where we left off above):

5. Disaster Recovery Cloud Services

Nowadays, online data are a vital part of any business activity, and the loss of that data can have handicapping consequences on all future activity of that company. That is why backup and disaster recovery services are an extremely important and increasingly popular pack for businesses worldwide.

6. Insurance for Environment Recovery

Not just your business data is important, but the work environment as well, from easily replaceable but necessary components like office space and furniture and computers and onto more specialized equipment which may take longer to replace. In order to make sure the recovery of your work environment doesn’t ruin you as a budding business, you need to be properly insured. A good disaster prevention insurance should cover as much of the expenses required for recovery as possible. Furthermore, if you opt for a comprehensive disaster recovery service pack (the kind which also provides cloud storage backup for your data), you should also have temporary access to a working space nearby, capable of hosting a limited number of people until your offices get reinstated.

7. Disaster Recovery Overseer (or Overseeing Team)

Depending on the size of your enterprise, you can assign only one person to this task or you can assign a whole team for it. The main idea is that someone should already know how to access all of the services above optimally, where to obtain the funding, what legal counselling to call, where to order replacement equipment from and so on. This person should have a very clear list of steps to be followed in case of disaster, which brings us to our main section.

B. Steps to Follow in the Disaster Aftermath (for Businesses)

In order to be prepared for an optimal and timely recovery in case a disaster strikes, it’s crucial to have a disaster preparedness checklist created in advance. In order to create the ideal checklist, especially if you are a business, you first need to identify your recovery priorities along the aforementioned two main lines: the recovery of your environment (physical activity space) and the recovery of your data. Identifying your priorities and formulating a disaster recovery plan are ideally completed with the help of a disaster recovery consultant team (for businesses).

Here is a simple example of how should this checklist look like, in order to get a better idea of how to create yours:

Call the required authorities in order to pronounce the disaster created, and initiate the insurance fund-accessing procedures.
Get in touch with the service ensuring your cloud data backup and let them know you will be needing all the info (and perhaps some office space as well) for resuming your business activity.
Select the employees who are qualified (and still capable) of resuming work in a low-maintenance stance so you can keep producing your services and keep in touch with your customers. Get them in the office space still available (or that provided by your disaster recovery service team) so they can start right away.
Have your PR specialist create a press release alerting both the general public and your clientele of the unfortunate event, your sympathies for those whose lives were affected by the disaster and your commitment to help them out (and to resume your business activity).
Have a legal counsellor (or your insurance agent) advise you about potential compensations that you may be needed to offer your employees if they were harmed in any way by the disaster. Your future productivity through this critical time depends on them, so it is in your best interest to keep them happy.

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Top Christian Disaster Relief Organizations Active in Emergency Response

Christian disaster relief organizations are actively involved in emergency relief efforts around the world. Some focus on fighting hunger and poverty while others provide emergency aid in the case of a natural disaster. Many organizations become active in emergency situations tackling different aspects of a crisis and helping with humanitarian aid. Whether it’s medical assistance, food products and water, clothing, toiletries, or bedding, Christian disaster relief organizations help supply victims of a disaster with essentials in the aftermath of the event.

Some of these organizations are active in emergency response and will typically become involved in relief efforts immediately after a disaster takes place. The vital efforts that these organizations make help survivors navigate the difficult time following a disaster. Christian disaster relief organizations rely mostly on Christian charity donations to fund their relief efforts and to carry out their activities. Beyond donating money for these organizations, people can volunteer for different actions and help support the relief efforts that they provide.

Top Christian Disaster Relief Organizations

Members and volunteers of these disaster relief organizations work around the clock to gather funds, organize support actions, and gather and distribute emergency supplies. Some of the largest Christian disaster relief organizations working at the moment provide international aid and are prepared to become active in emergency situations world-wide. Here are the top Christian disaster relief organizations that are equipped to intervene and provide aid in the aftermath of a crisis, either in the U.S. or internationally.

1. The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is perhaps most commonly known for its members’ efforts to help Americans seeking basic necessities such as food, warmth, and shelter. The organization also has disaster relief teams that are permanently prepared to intervene when a community is at risk in the wake of a disaster or a civil disorder. The Salvation Army provides food and water, bedding, shelter, and other essentials to those in need.

This Christian humanitarian aid organization was established by William Booth, and it was originally named The Christian Mission. It became known as The Salvation Army back in 1878, and it has been working to help those in need since its inception. The organization’s disaster relief services adapt to the needs of each situation, but they are primarily focused on providing warm meals and cold drinks to survivors from Salvation Army mobile kitchens.

The organization is also equipped to open disaster relief shelters and provide warmth and shelter for people who have lost their homes and have nowhere to go. It also provides direct financial aid to those in need via a network of casework specialists. During the early stages of a disaster, the Salvation Army will focus, however, on the most pressing needs that survivors have and it will strive to provide food, water, clothing, medical care, and shelter.

As the Salvation Army is a Christian disaster relief organization, it has trained staff members that also provide emotional and spiritual support to survivors via its pastors and ministry. After meeting the survivors’ most urgent needs, the organization also deploys volunteers and members to help in cleaning and rebuilding projects when these are necessary.

2. Samaritan’s Purse

A nondenominational evangelical Christian organization, Samaritan’s Purse provides worldwide physical and spiritual support to victims of natural disasters, war, disease, hunger, and poverty. The organization was founded by Franklin Graham back in 1970, and it has been working to provide aid for people that are suffering in the aftermath of natural disasters or war.

The organization’s name is derived from the biblical story of the Good Samaritan. The story describes how the Samaritan rescued a hurting man that had been ignored by other passers-by. The Samaritan’s Purse organization has international crisis response units as well as U.S. disaster relief teams that are constantly ready to intervene in the wake of a disaster.

Samaritan’s Purse has a network of warehouses strategically located around the world. The organization stores emergency supplies in these locations in order to be ready to act quickly and deploy Disaster Assistance Response Teams in case aid is needed. Samaritan’s Purse provides survivors with food kits that contain staple items such as cooking oil, beans, soy meal, rice, salt, and corn. The organization also sends water purification kits to areas where the local water supplies have been contaminated because of a disaster.

Other disaster relief efforts that the organization is focused on include the deployment of fully equipped mobile medical teams on site to help people that do not have access to medical care during a crisis. Samaritan’s Purse also provides survivors with blankets, tents, and heavy-duty plastic sheeting. In addition to these efforts, the organization sends supplies such as hygiene items, cooking utensils, and other essentials to affected areas.

3. Operation Blessing

Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation (OBI) is a faith-based organization that provides relief to disaster survivors both in the United States and internationally. Its core programs are centered on disaster relief, hunger relief, medical aid, children and orphan care, as well as community development. The organization is currently providing strategic relief in 37 countries around the world and in the United States to alleviate the suffering caused by poverty, hunger, and natural disasters.

Businessman and philanthropist M. G. Robertson founded OBI back in 1978. The organization is currently governed by a national board of directors which includes its founder. The disaster relief efforts that the organization makes are centered on providing victims of natural disasters and refugees in life-threatening conflict with the essentials required in each case. OBI distributes food, safe water, medicine, and other supplies to victims world-wide. The organization also becomes involved in the long-term recovery efforts that survivors need, deploying teams to assist with debris clean-up and repairs.

4 .Catholic Charities USA

Catholic Charities USA is a social service network that expands nationwide. It provides aid and financial support to those in need regardless of their religious, economic, or social backgrounds. Catholic Charities was founded in 1910 under the name National Conference of Catholic Charities, and it has been hard at work ever since providing shelter, food, and relief.

CCUSA is one of the Christian disaster relief organizations in the U.S. that has member agencies who are prepared to provide both immediate and long-term relief when a disaster occurs. CCUSA can immediately deploy food, water, personal care supplies, and financial aid to survivors.

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Disaster Recovery 101: How to Prepare and What to Expect

Disaster recovery is a concept that every business, organization or company should keep in mind at all times. We all hear about terms such as ‘backup’, ‘data protection’, ‘high availability’ or ‘cloud computing’, but what do they really refer to, in the big disaster recovery picture? Our Disaster Recovery 101: How to Prepare and What to Expect guide will walk you through every necessary step involved in the disaster recovery process. Not only will we provide a complete definition of what disaster recovery is, but we will also go through the importance of sticking to these plans through testing and training. We’ll go through what a disaster recovery plan sample or template should look like, as well as the ways in which you can save software, information and other essential IT aspects.

Learn how to protect the critical technology and data that companies strive to build up in our full disaster recovery manual below.

Types of Disasters

Before we get into detail about disaster recovery examples, templates or practices, we need to cover potential scenarios. When referring to both businesses and communities, disasters can be identified in two main ways:

Natural disasters
- Wildfires
- Floods
- Tornadoes
- Earthquakes
- Landslides
- Hailstorms
- Tsunamis
- Avalanches etc.

Man-made disasters
- Fires
- Criminal actions
- Terrorist attacks
- Warfare
- Industrial hazards
- Rioting, stampedes
- Radioactive materials
- IT attacks

As you can see, the example list of disasters is extensive. However, we must be aware that any one of these disasters can take place at any time, even in the center of the largest company or city. Even though you can’t avoid a natural disaster altogether, you can take all the necessary precautions to reduce the damage and general impact of the disaster.

From a business point of view, these natural and man-made disasters can affect the entire evolution of a company. A server can be destroyed, an e-commerce site can be permanently shut down, and every last fundamental document in the office can be damaged beyond repair. A thriving business can die out even after a small incident if discover recovery planning wasn’t carried out beforehand. We can’t stress enough how significant disaster recovery preparation is for a company; this is why we’ll describe a few reasons why you should focus on it below.

Why Focus on Disaster Recovery

Strategy is critical to any company, no matter its size or niche. Nowadays, almost all companies rely on computer technology for data management and business growth. As a result, a business strategy should always contain disaster recovery solutions and planning techniques to prepare for the worst. Unfortunately, quite a few businesses tend to overlook this aspect and end up with irreparable damage after a disaster like the ones we described above. Nevertheless, why is it so important for companies to focus on disaster recovery?

Save money – Multiple studies show that preparing for a disaster accordingly will help the company with the disaster recovery costs. Even though it might require an investment in advance, it will save a company much more in case a disaster takes place.
Save staff – More importantly than any form of software or business data are the lives that can be affected as a result of a disaster. If a company sets up reliable disaster recovery strategies, the risk of harming staff is considerably reduced.
Save the company – In the end, a disaster can lead to the complete termination of a company. No matter how successful the business is prior to the disaster, a lack of preparation will ultimately result in one less company on the market.

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

In business, the terms ‘disaster recovery’ and ‘business continuity’ generally go hand in hand. Even though the topics are often discussed separately or even as the same concept, disaster recovery is actually a part of business continuity. The former refers to protecting and managing data, systems and other information technology components, while the latter is about saving the entire company in case of a disaster. In a nutshell, a business continuity plan is basically not complete without disaster recovery options. In numerous cases, the terms are referred to side by side to highlight both the IT essentials of disaster recovery and the general procedure for keeping the company going.

As opposed to disaster recovery, business continuity contains multiple additional aspects, such as:

Policy and program
Business Continuity / Business Continuity Management plan & planning
Management
- Audit
- Document
- Security
- Change

In turn, business continuity is part of a greater topic, that of risk management. Risk management, on the other hand, falls under the main category of business administration. Even though the description for each of these concepts varies, they all come down to protecting a business in worst case scenarios. Even though disaster recovery may seem like just a tiny slice of the big pie, it is a vital aspect to a company’s well-being that should never be overlooked.

Disaster Recovery Planning for Business

As we have explained, planning for disaster recovery is crucial for maintaining business continuity. The main aspect of disaster recovery planning is having a trustworthy disaster recovery plan put together. While the general plan will be created once, it is imperative that it receives regular updates as the business grows. For example, if a new division is set up, new jobs are created, or a new set of services is launched, the disaster recovery plan needs to be modified accordingly. Even though it may seem pretty simple at first, a disaster recovery strategy contains several factors that need to be considered before you begin the process.

Risk Assessment

To properly identify what your disaster recovery plan should aim for, you need to see what information systems need to be protected. To do so, a complex risk assessment is required. As a company owner or manager, you can reach out to RA service providers or a specialist from an independent institute for your risk assessment. The final report will contain the most important pieces of equipment and technology that need to be regarded for the disaster recovery plan.

RTO vs RPO

Two major terms that always come up when speaking about disaster recovery are RTO (Recovery Time Objectives) and RPO (Recovery Point Objectives). The difference between RTO and RPO is that one refers to the time of disaster recovery, while the other refers to the crucial data involved. To briefly explain, Recovery Time Objectives can appear as a number of hours in which your company can still continue without functioning systems. On the other hand, Recovery Point Objectives can be your company’s fundamental database, such as the time it can continue without a particular set of PDF files.

Prior to creating the best disaster recovery plan for your business, you will also have to outline your core strategies for such situations. Disaster recovery strategies should include answers to questions like:

What is the most significant data stored on my company’s servers?
Do we only use an internal network or do we depend on external services for our data?
How can we move our data to cloud computing services to prevent loss after a disaster?

Disaster Recovery Plan Tips

After consulting risk management specialists, doing an idea exchange with the key management professionals of your company and outlining the main strategies you are prepared to implement, it is your job to define, create and test your disaster recovery plan. You can find plenty of free templates online, but you should always know that a disaster recovery plan should be tailored to your company. There are quite a few factors that can affect a disaster recovery plan:

Data storage options
Data protection
Choice of software
Networking technology

When preparing to outline your disaster recovery plan, the following structure can be considered

Introduction or Policy Statement
Recovery Strategy, Responsibilities
Plan Development
Incident Response
Plan Testing
History of Documents
Maintenance
Inventories and Appendixes

Always make sure that you include a few essential elements about how your workforce can act in case of a disaster. For instance, how to get windows open, how to evacuate the office, how to get to the closest hospital etc.

Solutions for Disaster Recovery

As you can clearly see, preparation is key to any disaster recovery plan. In order to allow your business to continue living after a disaster, you can look into hi-tech solutions and be ready for any type of tragic scenario. As far as information technology is concerned, here are some of the best ways to protect your company’s vital data.

Cloud Computing

There’s a lot of talk going around in recent years about cloud computing, but not everyone knows how it actually works. To put this in a nutshell too, cloud computing means managing data through internet servers instead of relying on a personal server or computer to store information. To help you get a better idea of it, a local server can crash and undergo irreparable damage at any time, while cloud computing solutions keep your data online.

Cyber Security

Preventing cyber attacks is just as important as protecting any of your company’s data through traditional methods. Hacking is becoming more and more of a common problem for small and large companies alike, and one of the only ways to prevent it is by developing a powerful cyber security system. You should always test an information protection system like this beforehand, to see if it can withstand cyber attacks.

How to Recover from Disasters: General Advice & Checklist

Even though disaster recovery refers to businesses that need IT and data protection, we also wanted to include a segment about how individuals can generally prepare and act during disasters. This information not only can be applied by employees of a company, but by anyone who is undergoing a similar situation.

Prepare – if you know that the area you live in is prone to certain natural disasters, make sure that you are always prepared accordingly. Stock up on food, water sources and other essential aspects that you will need in case of a disaster.
Stay safe – in case of natural disasters, staying safe is of the essence. Make sure that you take cover from windows and try to remain in a sheltered environment. If your home or the building you are in has a basement, seek refuge there.
Stay calm – it’s very easy for any situation to get out of hand if a natural disaster is involved. It’s super important that you stay calm at all times and go through the steps you had previously planned. Try to keep any panic at a minimum and act rationally.
Evacuation – if the disaster you are experiencing requires you to immediately evacuate the building, consult the evacuation plans you have and proceed with finding the closest exit.

As far as checklists and supplies kits are concerned, you should have access to the following:

Food (preferably canned)
Water
First aid kit
Flashlight
Whistle
Emergency mobile phone

You can download the official Emergency Supplies List issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security here.

List of Organizations for Disaster Relief

There are multiple organizations that can aid individuals seeking disaster relief. First and foremost, Red Cross branches can be found all across the United States and are a primary source of help in disastrous situations. To find the closest Red Cross branch in your area, use their online chapter locator.

A complete list of disaster relief organizations includes solutions for:

medical attention
food and water
clothing
shelter
volunteers
bedding etc.

You can find links to disaster relief agencies all over the United States here.

Regardless if you’re preparing for a home or office disaster, it is without a doubt that you need to prepare. Make sure that you have a well-defined plan that is known by all individuals in the location and that you can get organized fast and safely. As for businesses and disaster recovery, investing time and resources into a solid plan can save the future of your company.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.