If you’re running any kind of business, there’s a high chance that your company relies on its IT functionalities to create and maintain record data. In an ideal world, storing assets would be enough. Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned- even for the best businesses in this digital age.
From cybersecurity threats to hard drive failures, there are a lot of contingencies you need to prepare for to prevent your business from suffering a major setback. These are times when an IT disaster recovery plan comes into play.
Here’s everything you need to know about creating an IT disaster recovery plan for your business.
Create an Inventory of IT Assets
The first step to an IT recovery plan is creating a business inventory of all your technology’s assets. You might already have done this when setting up the company’s infrastructure, but new equipment could’ve been added since then, so a fresh count of all IT assets should be in order.
If you’re using a third-party service to look after your IT infrastructure, have a talk with them about their own IT assets and management system. This way, you can better understand how they handle their IT disaster recovery policy.
Pinpoint Critical Services
Once you’ve made an inventory of your IT assets, you need to pinpoint the most critical ones that need to be protected when a major disruption occurs. These critical assets vary depending on what type of business you are in, but the most common ones across all types of organizations include customer information, financial data, IT structure, patented and copyrighted assets, among others.
To avoid the risk of losing important electronic data, it is vital that you pinpoint your critical IT assets. This allows for appropriate steps to be taken and backup systems put in place before anything happens or fails altogether.
Identify Potential Cyberthreats and Appropriate Responses
In the digital landscape, it’s extremely important to get all systems back up and running in as little time as possible in case you’re faced with cyberattacks. Even after taking all appropriate cybersecurity measures, there’s still a good chance that hackers can compromise your hardware or business’s IT network.
Fortunately, there are many ways to know if your computer or device is under cyberattack such as apps refusing to open, decreased hardware performance, your device slowing down, and more. If you find yourself wondering why is my computer so slow then it may be under a cyberattack. Other common warning signs include power issues, memory issues, and heat issues.
Create an IT Disaster Recovery Team
Once you’ve taken the steps detailed above, it’s now time for you to put together an IT disaster recovery team. You need to assemble the right experts who will be responsible for IT recovery operations if and when the disaster strikes. Properly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member, especially when including third-party vendors in the plan.
The IT disaster recovery team doesn’t have to be made up exclusively of full time employees only. Most can be on-call consultants and specialists who will step in when you need them to. Best to look for potential members from within your organization and then branch out and bring in outside talent.
Test Your IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Once the team is put into place and all details of the plan accounted for, the final step in creating a successful IT disaster recovery plan is testing it out to see whether it holds the fort. This is very important because you definitely don’t want to be metaphorically caught with your pants down when a real cyberattack happens and your IT disaster recovery plan fails to recover anything successfully.
Testing the disaster recovery plan will allow you and your team to fine-tune the details and make necessary changes to improve its efficiency and effectiveness in a real emergency. Never trust a disaster recovery plan that hasn’t been tested properly
Make Your Plan ASAP
It can’t be stressed enough how important an IT disaster recovery plan is for small businesses and startups as these are the types of businesses with the lowest chances of recovery from a setback. Try to make one for your business if you haven’t already. With more and more businesses going online, chances are you’ll definitely need it.
