WHAT IS A DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN?
In the digital world, there exists no perfect computing system, and failure is guaranteed to occur at some point. The next logical step to take is to prepare for its eventual occurrence and try to mitigate the system’s costs going offline.
Disaster recovery is the set of procedures followed to assist the recovery or restoring of vital data and information systems following a disaster. A disaster can be classified as a sudden event, including an accident or natural disaster that creates detrimental damage. In information management, disaster recovery plans are a critical subset of a business continuity plan (BCP), which seeks to prepare for, prevent, and recover from potential threats affecting an organization.
Disaster recovery focus on information technology or technological systems. It provides instructions to follow when responding to various disasters, including both cyber and environment-related events. It differs from incident response plans that focus on information gathering and coordinated decision making to understand and address a specific event. The ability to handle incidents can reduce downtime and cut both financial and reputational damages.
When a disaster recovery plan is designed and executed they enable the efficient recovery of critical systems and help an organization avoid further damage. The benefits of having a disaster recovery plan include:
· Minimizing recovery time and possible delays,
· Preventing potential legal liability,
· Improving security, and
· Avoiding damaging last-minute decision making during a disaster.
A disaster recovery plan can be tailored for a given environment. Some environment-specific plans include:
· Virtualized disaster recovery — Virtualization negates the need to reconstruct a physical server in the event of a disaster. Virtual disaster recovery allows you to install your virtual machine on any other server or computer. Installation is quick and easy and only requires you to move a file, reducing your business’s potential downtime. Virtual disaster recovery plans also allow businesses to test their plan through simulations to ensure solutions work as expected when a real disaster occurs.
· Network disaster recovery — Developing a plan for recovering a network gets more complicated as the complexity of the network increases. It is important to detail the step-by-step recovery procedure, test it, and keep it updated. Data in this plan will be specific to the network, such as in its performance and networking staff.
· Cloud-based disaster recovery — When using a cloud-based approach, Cloud disaster recovery can range from a file backup in the cloud to complete replication. Cloud disaster recovery can be space, time, and cost-efficient, but maintaining the disaster recovery plan requires proper management. The manager must know the location of physical and virtual servers. The plan must address security, which is a common issue in the cloud that can be alleviated through testing.
· Datacenter disaster recovery plan — This type of plan is more comprehensive than simply protecting the building where a business houses its servers. Features and tools within the building, such as physical security, support personnel, backup power sources, HVAC, utility providers, and fire suppression plans all have an effect on data center disaster recovery. When a natural disaster, cyberattack, or another type of outage occurs, all the previous elements must work together to protect data. A data center disaster recovery plan lowers the risk of cyberattacks, but a major natural disaster can still impact data.
Creating a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is difficult, but that doesn’t mean it has to be impossible. Find which approach is the right fit for you and your organization.