From Natural Disasters to I.T Disaster – Could your Business Survive?

From Natural Disasters to I.T Disaster Could your Business Survive

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Whether it is global terrorist events, freak acts of nature or manmade catastrophes, disasters totally out of the control of individual businesses can have monumental consequences. The Y2K bug did not materialise, but what if a major event does hit your IT systems? Could it survive? For how long? How fast could you implement your disaster recovery plan? Do you even have a disaster recovery plan?

Nearly every business these days relies on technology or an IT system. Even if these crash for a few hours there are serious consequences. To prevent a disaster crippling your business, a high quality, up to date, clear and concise plan needs to be in place. Your business would need to implement a disaster recovery plan and this entails three key stages.

Prevention Critical Risk Assessment

Before any such disaster hits, a risk assessment of your business is needed, and the best way to do this is to plan for the worst possible scenario. You need to be able to identify the key elements of your business that are essential to it staying afloat. This makes planning for their failure a lot easier and will give a clear idea of how long it would take to replace them.

Developing a fully operational offsite data processing facility (hot sites) and training disaster recovery personnel will reduce the risks. Be sure to back up files and keep them off site. This must be carried out every day if possible. Remember that rescue services such as the fire brigade will not put lives at risk during a fire to save data files. Both the business and IT leaders must work together in deciding which systems are the most critical to the company.

Continuity Performing Critical Services

If a fire has destroyed your office premises and IT systems, then there is little chance of performing to full potential. But it is vital that the business can still perform its key services, preventing the whole operation from going into meltdown. These procedures need to be implemented within the shortest possible time frame. The goal in an IT continuity plan is to simply continue business throughout the period of disruption as close to its full potential as humanly possible.

Post Disaster Recovery

It is important once the disaster is over that all the IT systems, communications services and personnel are able to get back to normality as soon as possible. There should be teams set up who deal with these issues. Also take into account things such as the restoration of power and water supplies.

Make no mistake: planning for disasters is one of the key elements of business management. It is vital to know what the acceptable damage to the business is. What is the maximum time the business could survive without critical IT systems? A risk assessment and recovery plan are crucial. How you react to an IT disaster could be the difference between successfully recovering and total failure.

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