Pop quiz – your systems are down, what do you do?

For many businesses, the majority of their work takes place either online or on computers. Even if this isn’t the case, it’s very likely that information about the company accounts, clients and products is being stored digitally. Nobody likes to think about the worst-case-scenario, but if you don’t prepare in advance your business could be severely damaged if you lose this data. Having an IT disaster recovery plan in place will make sure that you know where your data is, how you’re going to get it back, and how you can quickly get your business back up and running.

Time is money

We’ve calculated that an average company with 10 employees could lose over £1500 in lost productivity and empty salary for every single day of down-time. That number rises significantly if you factor in the production of goods, or any measures you’ll have to take to compensate your customers for services you were unable to provide. With this in mind, the aim of a good disaster recovery plan is to get you operational as soon as possible.

Where do you start?

The first step is to pinpoint which processes, information, and intellectual property your company cannot operate without, in both the long- and short-term. This is going to differ from business to business so a generic plan isn’t going to cut it in most cases. Once you know what you can’t live without, you can formulate a strategy that will allow you to reclaim your data in order of importance. Consider systems such as your hardware, service connectivity, software applications, data and restoration, and backup power supply.

It’s all in the details

A detailed step-by-step plan of exactly who is going to do what and where may feel like overkill, but the more detailed your disaster recovery plan is, the easier it will be to follow under potentially stressful circumstances. It should be clear enough that, if the designated person for the task is unavailable, any other appropriate person can step in and follow the processes.

Review your systems now

How easy it is to recover your data and become operational again in the event of a disaster is going to depend on what your company does and what systems you are using. If your staff are using hosted desktops then you may find the recovery plan easier to formulate, as they can work from anywhere and reduce your downtime significantly. Some types of backups involve storing your data on a tape then manually restoring it in a new server, however, these tapes often fail. With cloud computing, your data is held off-site, so you will reduce the time needed to manually restore backups, and eliminate the risk of losing any days of data through unreliable backup tapes.

A good IT disaster recovery plan will detail every step of the processes needed to recover your data, and reduce your downtime as much as possible. 

If you want to chat about disaster recovery planning, or any other IT requirements you may have, call SpiderGroup today on 0117 933 0570 or contact us online.

Updated November 2021