Creating a Good Disaster Recovery Plan
What will you do when your enterprise is suddenly without electricity – for a week? Organization operations may be affected unexpectedly in case unplanned incidences occur. Disasters as such can result from human error, power outages, virus attacks and other causes. It’s the role of the management to set measures to ensure that the business can deal with these tragedies when they occur: A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a documented approach for strategies to be used as a response in case unplanned events occur. A DRP must have all steps to be followed during such circumstances with an aim to control the magnitude of damages that may result. For DRP preparation, it is relevant to conduct a risk analysis as well as a business impact analysis. The following are key elements of a disaster recovery plan:
1. Conduct Risk Analysis
Before the development of a DRP, the organization must identify the possible vulnerabilities and how they can be solved, evaded or prevented. For instance, considering information, one major threat would be hacking. There are various measures to prevent this such as the use of antivirus, firewall, and encryption of information before sharing over a network. A measure of successive attack response should be well stated.
2. Set Priorities
Priority setting is essential in a disaster plan. For example, information is one of the most critical assets that when lost it may be impossible to recover. It’s good for DRP to outline data security measures such as the use of dynamic or frequent backups. The DRP will have to list priorities to save first.
3. Give Responsibilities
The DRP should indicate an organized way that communication should flow between staff. In this case, it’s good to assign some of the staff various roles to play in case of any calamity. The assignment of such roles should be attached to critical people in the organization.
4. Define Continuity Mechanism
The attacks should not crash organization's operation down. Measures like a back up recovery plan or having an alternative site to hold activities should be stated explicitly. It is one of the key elements of a disaster recovery plan.
5. Test and Update
A disaster plan has to be tested on a consistent basis to check its effectiveness and identify the possible deficits. There is also need to keep updating the DRP, since as time goes, different possible challenges erupt.
A DRP is an important asset to any organization. The document and accompanying assets are essential in ensuring business sustenance in the event of a disaster occurring.