If you’ve recently been promoted to manager and you’re unfamiliar with business management, disaster recovery is one of the first tasks you should start learning. This is particularly vital (and critical) if you’re in an area where disasters like thunder storms and floods happen regularly.
If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed (since disaster recovery is a whole company process with lots of nitty-gritty facts), don’t fret. We’re here to acquaint you with your brand-new mate, disaster recovery.
Disaster recovery is a set of procedures and processes that a company does to mitigate the effects of disasters. This focuses on IT, so don’t worry too much about human resources and other aspects that keep the company running just yet.
“Disaster” can be natural or man-made. By natural, we indicate floods and storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and many others. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to avoid these things from taking effect. The best you could do is to soften the blow to your IT system (and your business). Man-made disasters are caused (obviously) by individuals. This can vary from beverage spills to fires to even major hacking. You can put safeguards to avoid man-made disasters, but it’s best to still have a recovery program in mind if they do happen.
Your business requires disaster recovery mainly because it relies on IT as well as networking for its day to day functions. A lot of companies these days depend so closely on IT to the point that any interruption to its operations offers a major blow to the organization. IT is so popular it’s nearly a basic need, but it’s very vulnerable. Every part of your IT system, from your software to hardware, is subject to several threats. That is why disaster recovery is extremely important. Your IT program should be saved and its businesses started again As soon as possible so that you can limit whatever is lost.
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 stop these so-called “accidents” from occurring in the first place. You can’t do much to stop natural calamities, but you can do so much to prevent man-made ones from occurring. Think firewalls and safety rails 2. Detective steps – things you do to identify if something bad has occured. Think antivirus, but on a more substantial size (but indeed, an antivirus is a detective strategy). Alarms are also typical of your detective measure. 3. Corrective measure – what you need to do after an emergency has happened. Some examples are reboots and setting up of backup copies. All these measures should be tested consistently in order to look for flaws.
Any disaster recovery plan should include regular system back-ups. It’s vital that you make off-site backups just in case your business site is jeopardized. That way even though your on-site IT system is destroyed, you can still continue parts of your company somewhere else. Granted it’s not an entire 100% recovery, but sometimes the best you can wish for is to keep the core procedures complete.
It’s important that your disaster recovery plan is integrated into the company’s business continuity plan. Pay attention to things such as risk management and business continuity. There’s no such thing as a fail-safe plan. Always remember to prioritize. Only then can you be sure you’ll save the most important processes and keep the company running.
Looking for the best disaster recovery services available today in UK, then have a look at phoenix.co.uk for more information.