Prepare | Disaster Rally

Disaster Recovery Planning: How to Create Your Checklist

Business continuity, disaster recovery planning and database backup should all be at the top of any business administration to-do list. For example, a network disaster recovery plan is what any company should outline in case their network suddenly crashes. A small step like finding a disaster recovery plan template and implementing it according to the details of your business can actually save your company’s vital data in case a server disaster occurs. Even if your company is not active in an IT or similar technology niche, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be up to date with all the software solutions that can help you write your disaster recovery plans. This guide will provide you with all the information you need about disaster recovery planning and how to create your checklist.

We’ll go through the definition of disaster recovery planning, free examples of these document types, as well as the steps you need to go through to ensure business continuity from an IT point of view. You’ll find out why disaster recovery planning is so significant for ITIL management and how technology like VMware can save your company. Without further ado, here is the simple way to learn about disaster recovery planning.

Identify Strengths and Weaknesses

A key part of disaster recovery planning is targeting the strengths and weaknesses of your company from an IT point of view. Is your computer’s antivirus software up to date? How do you store and share your PDF, Word doc and spreadsheet files? Do you use a local center server for data storage? There are plenty of questions that you need to ask and honestly answer. Don’t be afraid to admit the weaknesses of your company; it’s almost impossible for a business to be 100% secure prior to disaster recovery planning. The important part is that you are aware of your IT weaknesses and what you need to do about them.

As an example, if you find that the main server you use tends to be faulty, you should consider an alternative method of storage for your company files. Nowadays, some of the most popular solutions are cloud based; by using this kind of technology, you won’t depend on a server for your information. The files of your company will be accessible online to those who are authorized to work with them. You can also invest in advanced security measures or consult a specialist for additional solutions.

Disaster Recovery Planning Prevention Methods

As always, it is better to prevent a problem than to deal with all of the consequences at the end. When it comes to disaster recovery planning, the situation is no different. Even though the methods of disaster prevention for a business are numerous, there are three main steps that need to be taken.

Assessment

To solve an issue, it is best if you get to the cause. A risk assessment will help you identify the weakest points of your company and see what the vulnerabilities are. Your information systems might not be well-protected, or the software you use might not be safe. Performing a risk assessment is a reliable way to see what you have to do afterwards.

Implementation

Once you identify the causes and the precautions you need to take, proceed with implementation. It might be difficult for your company to take all the necessary measures at once (due to costs), but it is highly suggested that you work on these aspects in time.

Maintenance

Even when you have your disaster recovery planning all set up, you should always carry out regular checkups. Businesses grow and change all the time, and so should disaster recovery planning strategies.

Sample Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist

Disaster recovery planning strongly depends on individual company details. You can search for templates all you want, but one rule will not apply to all. What you can do, however, is go through a series of topics that your disaster recovery plan should include. You should undergo disaster recovery planning with a team, which can include IT specialists in your company or other independent professionals.

Roles: establish the roles for your employees throughout a disaster.
Responsibilities: set the responsibilities for each employee in a case like this.
Task List: outline the priorities and a task schedule for emergency situations.
Backup: immediately check if your backup is working.
Relocation: establish a place that can serve your staff for relocation if it will be required.
Update Schedule: make sure to always update the schedule and disaster recovery planning checklist and apply any changes.

Stay safe and protect your employees and data with a proper disaster recovery planning strategy.

Useful Links

Ready.gov Disaster Recovery Planning Sample: https://www.ready.gov/business/implementation/IT
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): www.nist.gov
Microsoft SQL Disaster Recovery: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/822400
RTO vs. RPO for Disaster Recovery Planning: http://www.techadvisory.org/2014/07/the-difference-between-rto-and-rpo

Image sources: 1, 2, 3.

How to Come Up with a Valid Disaster Recovery Plan

The future of your company or organization might very well depend on a well-built disaster recovery plan. Business continuity planning should be considered mandatory for any company, regardless of the size, and should be taken seriously from day one. Your system or database of information should always be protected, and not just on a local server. Software and application crashes, network malfunctions and technology disasters can occur at any time and even the most powerful servers can be shut down instantly. Without a reliable backup and disaster recovery plan, any natural or man-made disaster can result in the inexistence of your company and all you have worked hard to achieve until that point.

The purpose of disaster recovery plans is to minimize reconstruction costs, protect your vital company data and avoid even more damage than the ones created post-disaster. In this small guide, we will teach you what you can do to outline and create a disaster recovery plan that can help your business continue living even after a terrible disaster. Learn how you can write a disaster recovery plan for businesses below.

Do Your Research

Before creating your checklist and beginning the disaster recovery plan process, it is critical to do some background work and documentation. The internet is filled with free templates and examples of how the disaster recovery plan document should look like. You can find a PDF or Word doc and have your disaster recovery plan developed on those guidelines.

Also, it helps to be familiar with useful acronyms such as NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), SQL (Structured Query Language), FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) or ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), to name a few. Nevertheless, make sure that you take the sample, template or example provided and adjust the steps according to your company’s personal needs. For instance, if your company is a healthcare organization like a hospital, you should do research on the HIPAA disaster recovery plan.

Another option is to collaborate with professionals to create your company’s disaster recovery plan. You can also look into solutions like VMware, Microsoft SharePoint or Oracle Disaster Recovery Solutions, but we’ll get more into these below.

Analyze Your Company

After you have a general idea about the definition of a disaster recovery plan, you’ll see that it’s pretty simple to understand. After you have a general idea about the definition of a disaster recovery plan, you’ll see that it’s pretty simple to understand. The next step is to see where your company is at so you can plan for any contingency. Define what computer technology your company relies on to function and re-consult your protection policy, if it exists.

An important part of this process is identifying the center of your company’s resources, servers included. For example, if you are a manufacturing company that relies on a single local server for all of your data, you might want to consider a cloud computing solution in case any industrial hazards take place. You should begin excluding outdated methods of storage and look into the new opportunities that the evolution of technology now offers us.

Apply Prevention Methods

Prevention and protection are the best ways to prepare your disaster recovery plan. Of course, it is crucial to think of the worst and see how you can repair damages, but it is even more significant to see how you can prevent them from occurring in the first place. In this regard, the most reliable way to protect your company’s crucial data is through cloud computing, as we showed in our aforementioned example.

While local servers do a fine job of storing a large amount of information, they can crash and permanently be destroyed at any given moment. To prevent the loss of your company’s core information, you can switch to cloud computing technology. Your data will be stored online, and all of your employees will be able to have authorized access through an internet connection. Do your research and find a trusted provider that can fulfill the requirements of your business.

Create Your Disaster Recovery Plan

When you’re ready to create your disaster recovery plan, make sure that you have all the data you need beforehand. At this point, you should already know your company’s IT strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, you should have considered some prevention methods, like the one we spoke about above. When you are ready, proceed with a similar structure for your disaster recovery plan:

Statement, Introduction or Policy – include the results from a risk assessment, as well as the objective of your disaster recovery plan.
Prevention – describe the steps that your company can take to prevent the disaster.
Disaster Recovery Strategies – outline the ways in which you will be able to recover data from the disaster, as well as how much time it will take.
Plan, Development and Steps – the specific steps your business will take to recover from a disaster.
Testing the Disaster Recovery Plan – more information on this topic below.
Updates and Maintenance – how you can always upgrade your disaster recovery plan when changes take place in your business.

These are just the main points that your disaster recovery plan should expand on. Depending on your niche, products, services, number of employees and so on, you should set specific guidelines and rules for disasters and similar situations.

Testing the Disaster Recovery Plan

Last but certainly not least, it is imperative that you test your disaster recovery plan. Everyone at your workplace should know about the steps that need to be taken and how they can help in such a situation. By testing your plan, you will also find out what the weakest points are and how you can adjust them beforehand. If you have decided to invest in additional resources (like cyber security or cloud computing solutions), make sure that they succeed in protecting your company’s data.

As a final note, we highly recommend that you take all of these steps when founding your business and always keep your disaster recovery plan up to date.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4.

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.