Imagine this: You drive into work one day only to discover that a fire has decimated your office building. After the initial concern for employee safety, property loss and other thoughts that race through your head, you need to consider the safety and status of your company, client, financial and e-mail data. Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place to successfully handle an event like this? If you have never or even rarely discussed backups or disaster recovery plans, then it is quite possible you have lost all of your company data and quite possibly your business. It is a dreadful place to be, but it can be avoided by developing a plan that works for your business.
If you rely on computer-based data to run your business, a disaster recovery plan is crucial to its continuation after a disaster. This includes:
- server and computer backups
- a backup schedule to fit your company’s needs
- protocol for who handles the backups and verifies logs to monitor
- for backup failures
- a planned schedule to test the data restore to ensure that
- backups are functioning correctly
- a plan for off-site storage and rotation of the backups
- a list of crucial equipment that must procured to re-establish
- business operations
- an alternate location for offices
There is a great deal to consider when developing a disaster recovery plan. You can not weather a catastrophe like this without being prepared to rebuild. It is very important that an IT expert walks you through a strategy-development process that works for your company. Knowing your data is safe ensures the ability to rebuild after a total loss.