As organizations continue to expand operations in the global market, they are subject to many hazards that threaten their operations, including natural disasters, cybercrimes, acts of terror, and mechanical breakdowns, amongst others.
Business continuity is restoring business operations to normal during or post-downtime, and disaster recovery is a vital part of business continuity.
This blog examines the need to prepare for disasters and examines such calamities. This blog offers a detailed guide on preparing for a disaster.
What is Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is a strategy that describes how an organization goes about restoring normalcy and functioning after disruption.
The primary objective of disaster recovery is to reduce the time servers and applications are unavailable or out of service so that business operations may proceed with little disruption.
Importance of Disaster Recovery
- Business Continuity: Makes sure that utilizations and operations that are crucial for an organization or community’s effective functioning can continue or quickly be restored after the disaster.
- Data Protection: Protects information to reduce the risk of loss and ensure the reliability of critical data and other records.
- Compliance: It assists business organizations in aligning with the mandatory and legal policies on data management and continuity.
- Reputation Management: Safeguards the organization from reputational risks due to its inability to react in emergencies.
- Financial Stability: Mitigates overall financial risk and loss-contact due to prolonged periods of plant or manufacturing floor shutdowns which disrupt entire production cycles.
Types of Disasters
Natural Disasters
Catastrophes are also catastrophes that can affect independence, for example, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and fires. Preparing for natural disasters involves:
- Risk Assessment: The assessment of physical or climatic threats unique to an organization’s location.
- Data Backup: It ensures data is saved and backed frequently in different locations, even outside the organization.
- Infrastructure Protection: Incorporation of measures aimed at the physical structure, sealing and concrete works, installation of barriers for floods, etc.
- Emergency Response Plans: Policies regarding emergency response might include protecting employees and maintaining operations in case of an incident.
Cyberattacks
As mentioned earlier, malware like ransomware, phishing, and DDoS could devastate an organization and its data. Effective disaster recovery planning for cyberattacks includes: Effective disaster recovery planning for cyberattacks includes:
- Regular Backups: Backing up some important data regularly and storing them in other physical locations that hackers or unauthorized remote users cannot easily access.
- Incident Response Plan: Implementing a platform that outlines the specific steps to be taken upon detecting a cyber threat to contain its impact.
- Employee Training: Rather than depending on firewalls and software to prevent such attacks, training employees to avoid creating an environment where such an attack is possible is crucial.
- Security Measures: Setting up firewalls, security barriers, intrusion detection systems, and auto-updating or installing antivirus software.
Terrorist Attacks
Such acts of terror can threaten organizational continuity due to the physical destruction of critical facilities or a cyber attack. Preparing for such events involves: Preparing for such events involves:
- Physical Security: Fortunately, physical security has also received much attention as compared to logical security; this is through exclusive controls, practical physical barriers, surveillance, and well-established physical barriers.
- Contingency Planning: Creating response strategies for various forms of terrorist threats, including how to respond to them and when and how best to evacuate during threats not involving bombs.
- Collaboration with Authorities: When it comes to threats, this means keeping good relations with local and national authorities so that they can inform the relevant businesses about possible threats and actions.
- Redundant Systems: Accord and identify the establishment of duplicate arrangements and secondary locations for the organization in case the first installations are threatened.
Equipment Failures
A system or power failure or a similar technical problem with business equipment as servers can stop operations. Effective disaster recovery for equipment failures includes: Effective disaster recovery for equipment failures includes:
- Redundant Systems: Proper backups for equipment in the event of a failure involving standby equipment that can take over when the primary fails.
- Regular Maintenance: Thus, an effective lubrication regime consists of performing periodic maintenance and testing of equipment to ensure that it does not fail at the wrong time.
- Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS): Some measures include employing UPS systems to safeguard against power surges or blackouts to sustain functional operations.
- Spare Parts and Equipment: Ensuring the company has spare parts and backup equipment to replace impaired parts to minimize breakdowns.
Steps for Effective Disaster Recovery Planning
1. Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
The two critical components of disaster recovery planning are a risk assessment and the resulting impact analysis. This entails threat analysis, risk estimation, and an analysis of risk significance on top business processes. Key steps include:
- Identify Critical Assets: Orders and Fastidiousness: Identify which data, systems, and applications are critical for business operations.
- Analyze Impact: Examine the variability of the impact of various disaster types on these necessary resource inputs.
- Prioritize Risks: Prioritize the recovery based on known risks, from high-risk to low-risk, based on the probable and severe impact.
2. Develop a Disaster Recovery Strategy
Following the above risk assessment and the business impact analysis, developing a disaster recovery strategy detailing how it will handle various disasters becomes critically essential. Key components include:
- Recovery Objectives: Explain how to use Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) regarding crucial business assets.
- Backup Solutions: Maintain the selected backup solutions to align with the identified RTOs and RPOs, making it possible to frequently back up the data and perform quick restoration.
- Redundant Infrastructure: Put multiple or duplicate network configurations and server facilities in place to give failover futures.
- Communication Plan: Communication strategies for Disaster management: Establish a communication strategy that will allow for effective, efficient, and swift disaster communication.
3. Create a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
A detailed DRP also clearly outlines the plan and procedures for how bodies can regain functionalities after a disaster. Critical elements of a DRP include: Key aspects of a DRP include:
- Roles and Responsibilities: Assign clear and specific roles and responsibilities to employees designated as key disaster recovery team members.
- Step-by-Step Procedures: Compiling clear and concise written instructions on reclaiming these essential items and resuming normalcy.
- Resource Requirements: The next step is determining the human resources needed for disaster recovery, equipment, software, and any other resources you will need in a disaster.
- Testing and Maintenance: While developing the DRP, incorporate provisions for constant testing and updating of the DRP as and when necessary.
4. Implement Disaster Recovery Solutions
Ensure that all the measures in the DRP are put in place to ensure you are always ready for disaster recovery. This includes:
- Backup Solutions: Utilize backup solutions in separate locations like cloud backups, off-site backups, and data replication.
- Redundant Systems: Design for repetitive elements and standby procedures in case of interruptions to the flow of work.
- Security Measures: The first and foremost contingency plan should be to put up mechanisms to guard networks against cyber-criminals and intruders.
- Emergency Equipment: Ensure backup generators and uninterruptible power supplies are correctly maintained and available.
5. Test and Update the Disaster Recovery Plan
PRIORITIZATION OF DRP: Testing and updating the DRP are important exercises and should be conducted frequently for the DRP to be effective. This involves:
- Regular Testing: Sample tests include the tabletop exercise and the full-scale simulation conducted as tests to determine the strengths of the plan.
- Review and Update: The following changes can be made: Periodically review and amend the DRP to address emergent threats or risks, modifications in the business atmosphere, or impacts accrued from DRP testing.
- Training and Awareness: Prepare employees to be prepared and ready to take action with disaster awareness and training programs throughout the employees’ time with the company.
6. Continuous Monitoring and Improvement
A disaster recovery plan is an ongoing process, needing to constantly audit and upgrade whenever needed. Key activities include:
- Monitoring: Conduct regular security audits of the network and infrastructure to detect threats and exposure routinely.
- Incident Response: Act fast in incidents and adapt, if necessary, some of the DRP features by analyzing the planned scenarios’ effectiveness.
- Feedback Loop: Include the provision of a feedback mechanism to get feedback from the stakeholders and make the necessary changes to the DRP.
Conclusion
Business continuity is essential to disaster management because it involves keeping operations afloat or returning them to normalcy following a disruption.
To prevent disastrous events and their detrimental effects, an organization should familiarize themselves with different kinds of disasters, properly evaluate the risks that may accompany them, and create a proper strategy to help minimize the catastrophe’s results.
Disaster recovery remains a critical component in any organization. It should be subjected to frequent testing and constant monitoring to ensure the best results are achieved as an organization showcases constant commitment to integrating and developing better disaster recovery frameworks.
Disaster recovery is also relevant since it represents an organization’s willingness to secure its assets and reduce the impact of future disasters.
With threats ranging from natural calamities to cyber terrorism, to hi-tech equipment failure and social unrest/terrorism, it is prevailing wisdom that no business organization can afford to be without a viable disaster recovery strategy.
FAQ's
DR planning is a process that defines how an organization comes back to its proper functioning after a disruption. All organizations should enclose it because disaster prevention helps to continue the business, protect the information, adhere to legal norms, preserve reputation, and reduce financial threats.
Businesses should prepare for natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires), cyberattacks (malware, ransomware, phishing, DDoS), terrorist attacks, and equipment failures.
Some of the control measures include risk evaluation, data backing up, infrastructure safeguard, and creating sound disaster contingency plans to safeguard its workforce and continue running during disasters.
An effective DRP includes clear roles and responsibilities, step-by-step recovery procedures, resource requirements, and provisions for regular testing and maintenance to ensure the plan remains up-to-date and effective.
There must be a disaster recovery plan, which will need to be updated often and tested through tabletops and simulations. It should be a living document that is to be revisited from time to time to capture new threats, changes in the business environment, and stakeholders’ feedback.
