Disaster Recovery For Beginners

By Mike Ryan


If you've just be promoted to manager and you're new to business management, disaster recovery is one of the first things you should start learning. This is especially important (and urgent) if you're in an area where natural disasters such as storms and floods occur frequently.

If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed (because disaster recovery is an entire business process with a lot of nitty-gritty details), don't worry. We're here to acquaint you with your new friend, disaster recovery.

Disaster recovery is a set of steps and processes that a company does to minimize the effects of catastrophes. This focuses on IT, so don't worry a lot regarding human resources along with other elements that keep your corporation running just yet.

"Disaster" can be natural or man-made. By natural, we mean storms and floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. There's nothing you can do to prevent these things from happening. The best you can do is to soften the blow to your IT system (and your business). Man-made disasters are caused (obviously) by people. This can range from beverage spills to fires to even major hacking. You can place safeguards to prevent man-made disasters, but you should still have a recovery plan in mind if they do happen.

Your company needs disaster recovery because it relies on IT and networking for its day-to-day functions. Most businesses nowadays rely so heavily on IT to the point that any interruption to its operations deals a critical blow to the company. IT is so commonly used it's practically a basic need, but it's also very vulnerable. Every aspect of your IT system, from your hardware to your software, is subject to many threats. This is why disaster recovery is so important. Your IT system needs to be saved and its operations resumed ASAP so you can minimize your loss.

There are three types of control measures you must uses in your disaster recovery plan. These are:

1. Preventive measures - these are things you do to prevent these so-called "disasters" from occurring in the first place. You can't do much to prevent natural calamities, but you can do so much to prevent man-made ones from occurring. Think firewalls and safety rails 2. Detective measures - things you do to detect if something bad has happened. Think antivirus, but on a larger scale (but yes, an antivirus is a detective measure). Alarms are also part of your detective measure. 3. Corrective measure - what you do after a disaster has occurred. These include reboots and installation of backups. All these measures should be tested regularly so you can check for flaws.

Any disaster recovery plan should include regular system backups. It's important that you make off-site backups just in case your business site is compromised. That way even if your on-site IT system is totaled, you can still continue parts of your business somewhere else. Granted it's not a complete 100% recovery, but sometimes the best you can hope for is to keep only the core processes intact.

It's essential that your disaster recovery plan is built-into the company's business continuity program. Focus on things such as risk management and business continuity. There's no such thing as a fail safe strategy. Remember to prioritize. Only then can you be sure you'll save the most important processes and keep the firm working.




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