A disaster can happen to any business, big or small. Both cyberattacks and natural disasters pose a significant threat to your business’s longevity. When catastrophe does strike, it is crucial that you have a disaster recovery plan in place to protect your livelihood and reputation.
While 40% of SMBs do not reopen post-disaster, 62% still have no formal disaster recovery plan in place. Creating a plan gives your business the best chance of survival and can bring great peace of mind. This plan will help you get back up and running as quickly as possible, minimizing the amount of damage done to your business.
Follow these steps to design your disaster recovery plan:
Step One: Risk Assessment
The first and most important step in creating a disaster recovery plan is to have a risk assessment performed on your systems. This helps you to identify what parts of your system are most vulnerable in the event of a disaster. Once you know where your vulnerabilities lie, you can begin to create a strategic, customized plan to protect those areas.
Step Two: Mitigating Vulnerabilities
Now that you have a list of your potential vulnerabilities, it is time to start working on mitigating them. This will involve looking at each vulnerability and determining what needs to be done to protect that weakness.
Additionally, you will need to look at each vulnerability and determine what the consequences would be if that area was compromised. This will help you to prioritize which areas need to be addressed immediately.
Step Three: Applications
The next step is to look at all of the applications that you use and determine which ones are critical to your business. These are the applications that you cannot afford to have down in the event of a disaster.
For each critical application, you will need to create a plan for how it will be protected. This may involve having a backup system in place or having a way to quickly get the application up and running again if it is lost.
Step Four: Best Backup Methods
Once you have identified your critical applications, you need to determine how you will backup those applications. There are many different ways to back up data, and you need to choose the method that is best for your business. One popular method is through cloud storage.
You should consider how often you will need to perform backups and how you will store the backups. This is important to consider because you need to be able to quickly and easily retrieve your backups in the event of a disaster.
The Benefits of Disaster Recovery Plans
There are many benefits to having a customized recovery plan in place. Here are just a few:
- Reduced Downtime: One of the biggest benefits of disaster recovery plans is that they can help to reduce the amount of downtime in the event of a disaster. By having a plan in place, you will be able to get your business up and running again much faster.
- Lower Risk of Lost Data: If you have a disaster recovery plan in place, you will have a lower risk of losing data. This is because you will have multiple backups of your data in different locations.
- Save Money: In the long run, disaster recovery plans can actually save you money. This is because they can help to prevent data loss and reduce downtime, which can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $5 million per hour depending on the size of your company.
- Maintain Your Reputation: Disaster can damage your reputation. Having a disaster recovery plan in place will help to protect your reputation by ensuring that your customers always have access to your products or services.
Don’t Wait! Protect Your Company Today with RedNight Consulting
Designing a disaster recovery plan is one of the smartest proactive steps you can take to protect your business and employees. If you take the time to create a comprehensive plan, it will save you a lot of time, money, and heartache in the event of a disaster.
If you need further help designing a disaster recovery plan, RedNight Consulting can help. We have years of experience helping businesses to create disaster recovery plans that are tailored to their specific needs. Contact us today to learn more about our services!