The time it takes to get your business back up and running after an event is critical. Every day lost increases the likely hood of business failure. According to the Federal Emergency Aid Agency (FEMA), 71% of business are no longer operating just 2 years after a disaster. Smaller businesses, who are less likely to have been able to pick up the pieces after a significant event, have a higher failure rate. For this reason, it is critical for all businesses to have an IT disaster recovery plan in place.
One of the key factors that determines the likelihood of successful navigation of a disaster situation is how well-prepared the business is. This planning should cover employees, technology and customer communication.
How to Create an IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Business continuity plans should enable a business to respond quickly and effectively to most incidents, ranging from as small as a temporary power outage or the devastation caused by hurricanes and earthquakes.
Plamen Pazov from Xyber Data Recovery, says: “There are many precautions that can be taken but there are still failures. When things go horribly wrong, one of the most reliable forms of disaster recovery is good old-fashioned data recovery. The results can be remarkably fast and efficient, as well as much cheaper than most alternatives.
“Unfortunately, that option doesn’t justify the large upfront expense programs and is usually left behind, often not even used.”
Michelle Joosse, CEO of Hotline IT, says: “The weakest links in business is the lack of planning for a disaster; businesses need to understand their risks and make plans accordingly. At the very least, they should have an offsite backup solution, whether that be cloud or tapes, and they need to be stored offsite.
“There are a lot of good backup solutions available, but we personally suggest Datto SIRIS platform backups. Businesses should have at least a nightly backup offsite, but how long they store each backup is dependent on how important that data is to the business.
“One of our clients had a water leak in their server room and damaged all of their server equipment. We had a backup device in place that allowed us to spin up their servers as virtual machines while we replaced their servers and repaired their server room. Without that backup, it would have had devastating consequences to their business.”
Technology gives us the upper hand in dealing with unexpected events. Businesses can take simple steps that will improve day to day operations, but also allow them to continue to operate during an unanticipated event or incident.
The Weakest Link
Emy Carr, Managing Director of leading data management company, EC Integrators advises “If you’re taking in any customer data at all, there needs to be a governance process in place to understand how that data is moving across the organisation. Who is seeing that data? Who is touching it?”
“Any weak link across those actually compromises the data. These are prone to identity theft and hacking. Any organisation, small or large, should have a data governance in place.”
Every network has multiple points of potential failure. If these break, then the network stops working. The revolution in cloud based technology such as VOIP or managed services have made it possible for multiple end points such as a phone line or computer to stop working with the end user still being able to communicate by connecting via a different connection or access point.
Below are some simple steps that your business can take to create and implement an IT disaster recovery plan. In doing so, you can make sure you stand the best chance of recovering should a disaster strike.
Voice
- Move your phone numbers into the cloud. Just like a 1-800 number, you can direct your calls to any other line. This could be a second office or simply a mobile number. For bigger businesses or companies that need an ‘always available’ service, you can construct complex routing plans that ensure the calls are queued and answered seamlessly.
- Move to hosted telephony or VOIP. Hosted telephony means the phone system is hosted by a carrier rather than being located on premise. These are very secure and providers invest millions of dollars into them to ensure they never go down. VOIP handsets can be relocated easily, or worst case scenario can be replaced at a fraction of the cost of a full phone system and normally delivered in 24 hours. For the very short term, you can normally re-direct calls to mobiles.
Connectivity
- Install a back-up data circuit – having a second internet connection allows not only for a greater overall bandwidth under normal circumstances, but it also means you can keep operating if one circuit goes down. Retail customers are a good example; if a credit card machine stops working, it can mean huge amounts of lost business and unhappy customers, but this risk is unlikely to materialize if you have a back-up data circuit. A low cost alternative is a mobile sim. Make sure to test to make sure speed and signal are sufficient.
- Auto failover -automatically failing over onto a second circuit used to be very expensive. Recent advances in SD-WAN technology means you can now deliver this at a fraction of the cost.
Safe Data
- Offsite back up – onsite servers have been the mainstay of business computing for decades. However, with connectivity and storage costs at record lows, simply back everything up offsite for a fraction of the cost. When you store all important applications and files both locally and in a data centre, you can restore service quickly and with minimal corruption of data.
- Cloud applications – software providers are pushing people towards a “pay as you use” service. It means you get lower support costs with the added benefit of being able to access what from anywhere in the world as long as you have the right credentials. From a disaster recovery perspective, it not only keeps the data safe, but means they can continue to work even if they are unable to access your premises.
Team
- Plan and then practice and practice – people function better when they know what they are doing. This is why the military will practice procedures until they become second nature. While you don’t need to go overboard, ensuring that employees know what to do if an issue occurs is important. This may be something as small as knowing how to open their desktop VOIP client on a home laptop.
- Communication – no one likes being in the dark, especially when things go wrong. Ensuring staff know how to keep customers and other stakeholders up-to-date with the outage or interruption is vital. It is understandable that things can go awry. However, often a business is judged on how it responds to and communicates about a problem. This can have a lasting positive or negative impact.
Arna van Goch, Founder and Owner of Horizons21, agrees with the importance of keeping your customers informed when a disaster does strike. She says: “Customers always come first, whether they are right or not. This of course, is very industry-dependent. However, no matter what you are selling or how you are selling it, talk to your customer.
“If there is a disaster, people are, more often than not, going to be very sympathetic. No one wants to suffer the ill-effects of a hurricane, fried computers or ruined products because of a natural disaster. Nevertheless, such crises can and do hit. This is why it is essential that every business have an IT disaster recovery plan.
“In 2017, it’s not just about the great products you have; it’s also about the customer service. Without a solid IT disaster recovery plan in place, you are not going to make it very far. Put simply, solid customer service means making it personable, pre-empting questions and answering them.”
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