Disaster Recovery Plan: Why You Need One and How to Make One
A disaster recovery plan is a plan that is designed to help a business recover from an event that could cause significant damage.
It should be created for every business, regardless of its size. A small business should create a disaster recovery plan as well as a larger company because the risks are the same.
How to make a successful disaster recovery plan for your company
A company’s disaster recovery plan is a must-have for any business. It is designed to help the company in the event of a natural disaster, power outage, or other devastating event.
The best way to make a successful disaster recovery plan is by following these steps:
1. Establish a Disaster Recovery Plan Process
The planning process begins with knowing who and how to contact in the order specified after a disaster. Small businesses can direct their employees to take the necessary precautions to protect their property, assets, and inventory. You can also contact local authorities or a special security team.
Once the disaster recovery plan is in place, you can assign job responsibilities and hold employee training sessions.
2. Create an Effective Disaster Recovery Plan
A small business’s ultimate goal is to resume operations as soon as possible. And the key to developing and implementing a successful disaster recovery strategy is to plan for the worst-case scenario. As a result, communicate to your company’s employees the importance of developing a viable disaster recovery strategy.
Determine your company’s constraints and priorities. You must also account for applications, data storage, physical damage to your servers, and manual access to the system network when developing a suitable disaster recovery strategy.
For example, you can conduct a business impact analysis (BIA) to better understand the cause-and-effect implications of a disaster on your company’s sales.
3. Conduct an insurance and budget analysis.
Small businesses do not have the luxury of estimating their office inventory in total. As a result, it is prudent to calculate the replacement cost for each piece of equipment. It may appear time-consuming, but it can help you streamline disaster recovery procedures.
Once you know the cost structure, you can tailor the insurance check to your specific needs. Check your insurance coverage to ensure there are no gaps in coverage for direct and indirect costs before collecting the check.
4. Collect Store Supplies
Assemble all of the store supplies that your employees and business may require following a disaster. Provide medical kits to ensure your employees’ safety. Similarly, invest significantly in backup systems that can resume your business operations in the event of a disaster.
5. Plan for Post-Disaster Communication
Collecting relevant information that can be profitable for your business takes time and effort. As a result, having a post-disaster communication strategy is essential for small business owners. The goal is to ensure that businesses do not lose important contact information for clients, customers, vendors, creditors, agents, and insurance providers.
6. Align Logistic Goals
Your company’s supply chain may be disrupted because suppliers and vendors are also vulnerable to disasters. And this can influence the process for a small business that serves as a B2B business supplier.
The solution is to combine your supply chain team’s logistical goals with backup options. As a result, the dependency factor for both parties is reduced.
7. Understand the Importance of Backup
You must duplicate sensitive documents, such as contracts and business records. With the introduction of cloud storage and migration, small businesses can easily store an entire collection of relevant documents.
However, the documents can also be manually stored in a deposit box to protect them from potential cyber-attacks.
Conclusion
It is important to have a backup plan in place and be able to practice it frequently. You should also make sure that your employees are well-trained and understand what they need to do when a disaster strikes.
Source: crashplan.com