With companies becoming increasingly aware of the risks to their continued smooth operation, it is always surprising to discover an organization may not have an effective disaster recovery plan in place. Whether driven by cyber threats, infrastructure disruptions, or natural disaster, it is vital a company take stock of both likely and unlikely risks, and build plans to ensure they and their staff are ready to react, should the worst occur. An article in Computer Weekly discusses five key steps to ensure a company’s disaster recovery plan is effective, and explores the thought processes of company leaders in charge of putting these plans together.
A recent survey from Sunguard AS found that the most common risk, as seen by senior managers, was a cyber attack, with 53 per cent, believing it to be the most likely source of business disruption, and with 70 per cent of managers believing more funds should be spent on business continuity.
With such threats on the minds of company leaders, an organization should look to build an effective disaster recovery plan. The article suggests the following steps:
- Risk analysis, to determine both the likelihood of a particular event, and the impact of such an event occurring.
- Examination of potential points of failure, to determine the need for backups, redundancies, and other alternative solutions.
- Recovery times and objectives, to determine critical times for restoration of key services, and acceptable downtimes.
- Alternate locations, in the event a primary site is unavailable or unusable.
- Readiness, via the deployment of regular testing and training of any disaster recovery processes.
Source: https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Five-essential-steps-to-a-sound-disaster-recovery-plan
