The importance of Disaster Recovery Planning

For the last 20 years computers have been revolutionising the way we live; especially in terms of how we work. But what would happen to your business if all your data was suddenly lost – could it survive?

Many companies believe a 'disaster' is something that only happens once in a blue moon and more often than not, to someone else’s organisation. However these incidents are more common than many realise, with the numbers of viruses, security breaches, software issues, hardware failures and data corruption on the increase. Thankfully, more catastrophic events such as floods, fires, power interruptions and sabotage are less frequent, but all companies, large or small need to be prepared for the worst eventuality – however unlikely that may be.

Before we give you our top ten disaster recovery tips, here’s some statistics which highlight why disaster recovery planning is so essential:

90% of businesses that lose data from a disaster are forced to shut down within 2 years of the disaster. 50% of businesses experiencing a computer outage will be forced to shut within 5 years.
Source: London Chamber of Commerce

20% of all companies will suffer fire, theft, flood or storm damage, power failures, terrorism or hardware/software disaster. Of those without a business continuity plan:

    * 43% will never re-open
    * 80% fail within 13 months
    * 53% of claimants never recoup the losses incurred by a disaster
Source: Aveco

    * Less than 50% of all organisations have a business continuity plan
    * 43% of companies that do have a business continuity plan do not test it annually
    * 80% of companies have not developed any crisis management to provide IT
       coverage sufficient to keep the business functionally effectively
    * 40% of companies that have crisis management plans don’t have a team dedicated to disaster recovery

 

Source: London Chamber of Commerce

 

Storm’s top ten disaster recovery tips:

1. Ensure that your disaster recovery plan is well documented and includes all the procedures that are required to get your systems up and running again. Always store hard copies of the plan as well as soft copies and keep them in an offsite location.
2. Ensure that the roles of key staff are set out in the plan and that each person is aware of their role should the plan need to be implemented.
3. Always keep your IT system’s passwords in at least two safe places and make sure that one of these is not in the same area as your IT equipment. You should make sure that more than one key staff member has access to them and knows exactly where they are located.
4. Think about the best method of contacting and communicating with your key staff in the event of a disaster. Text message is a good way of contacting a large number of people at the one time, saving precious time.
5. Always practice your disaster recovery plan at least 4 times a year. This will give all your key staff the opportunity to practice their roles and will give the rest of your staff the chance to understand the procedure they would need to follow in the event of a disaster. It also gives the opportunity to identify and rectify any flaws in the process.
6. Use RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) as an onsite backup solution. This is used to increase uptime in light of a server failure. RAID is an umbrella term for computer data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple hard disk drives. To find out more about RAID, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks
7. Use an FTP server to back up your data on the internet. FTP backup is now viewed as one of the most secure and reliable ways to back up personal data.
8. Tape back ups are also still used by a lot of organisations to ensure their daily data is stored off site. It is widely advised that to avoid deterioration, tapes that are used every day should be replaced every six to nine months. Whether you use tape backups or an FTP server, being able to back up your data away from your organisation is something every organisation should view as a necessity.
9. Invest in a high quality power supply, which will protect your IT systems for as long as possible should a disaster occur. This will also help ensure smooth running of your systems on a daily basis.

10.   It is always a good idea to invest in a fire door for your server room. This will help keep your IT systems smoke free for as long as possible should a fire occur.