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Introduction to IT Disaster Recovery Planning
Get ahead in data protection with a cutting-edge IT disaster recovery plan. Learn about key strategies and tech for surviving a major disruption.
Brien Posey
July 31, 2024
6 Min Read
_(1).png?width=1280&auto=webp&quality=95&format=jpg&disable=upscale "chart showing 10 disaster recovery scenarios")
Disaster recovery planning ensures business resilience and continuity during turbulent events. A comprehensive plan outlines organizational strategies for recovering from data loss events, cyberattacks, workload outages, and other disruptions that could severely affect operations.
Organizations create disaster recovery plans for more reasons than to simply get their systems back online. For example, regulatory mandates may require having a plan in place. Additionally, a disaster recovery plan provides a clear roadmap for responding to various types of disasters, which helps minimize downtime and financial losses. Such plans also play a role in data protection, particularly during cyberattacks, by safeguarding sensitive information. Moreover, a business may need a disaster recovery plan to meet insurance requirements and qualify for coverage.
What Could Go Wrong? Scenarios and Risks in 2024
One of the most challenging parts of creating a disaster recovery plan is determining which disaster scenarios to prepare for. Some plans focus solely on rudimentary data backup and recovery procedures, while others cover many potential disasters, stopping just short of a zombie apocalypse. A good disaster recovery plan should account for any disaster with a reasonable chance of occurring. Here are some disaster scenarios to consider:
Data loss events: Including accidental deletion, hardware failure, or corruption.
Ransomware attacks: Malicious software that encrypts data until a ransom is paid.
Natural disasters: Such as fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes.
Data breaches: Exposure or theft of sensitive business data.
Extended power outages: These last more than a few minutes and potentially affect operational continuity.
Mission-critical workload outages: Disruptions impacting essential business operations.
Pandemics and other crises: Situations that prevent employees from physically traveling to organizational facilities
Crafting Your IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Although specifics will vary based on organizational needs, here are some high-level considerations to include in a disaster recovery plan:
Assemble a disaster response team
Begin by formalizing your disaster response team. Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member. When a disaster occurs, everyone should know their tasks. Avoid wasting time in a crisis trying to figure out who should do what.
Set clear RTOs, RPOs, and other critical objectives
Define recovery objectives in consultation with upper management and stakeholders. The objectives guide the IT department in minimizing downtime costs, such as lost revenue, opportunity costs, wasted employee hours, or regulatory fines. As such, the recovery objectives should be based on each workload's cost.
Key objectives include:
Recovery Point Objectives (RPO): Determine how often data backups are made and how much data could potentially be lost (because it has not yet been backed up) during a crisis.
Recovery Time Objectives (RTO): Specific the maximum acceptable downtime for critical workloads. For example, an organization might set an RTO of less than an hour for certain operations, ensuring they can recover quickly from backups if needed.
Elements of an Effective Disaster Recovery Plan
Several components should always be a part of a disaster recovery plan:
Protecting sensitive data and infrastructure
Outline security mechanisms to protect sensitive data and infrastructure against compromise. Additionally, create a redundancy plan to mitigate risks from component failures, ensuring continuity even if one part of the system fails.
Communication and incident management
As previously noted, organizations should designate roles and responsibilities for all involved in disaster recovery efforts. In doing so, it's usually prudent to assign an incident response leader to coordinate resources effectively.
Contact information
A sometimes-overlooked part of disaster recovery planning is collecting detailed contact information for the disaster response team. After all, you never know when a disaster might occur, so you need multiple contact options for each team member.
Data and infrastructure recovery procedures
Outline procedures for recovering data and restoring infrastructure. It should include backup strategies, recovery timelines, and methods for verifying restored systems.
Advanced Disaster Recovery Solutions for 2024
When it comes to disaster recovery, larger organizations go beyond the basics. After all, there can be huge costs associated with an outage.
Here are some advanced approaches:
DRaaS and hybrid offerings
Organizations are increasingly adopting Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) as an alternative to traditional backup and recovery (or to augment their existing backup capabilities). DRaaS ensures that an organization’s data is backed up to an off-site location, meaning the data remains safe even if a natural disaster destroys the organization’s on-premises facilities.
Some organizations opt for a hybrid solution, combining local backups for fast recovery with cloud backups for enhanced resilience and geographic redundancy.
Disaster recovery planning suites
Beyond using backup software, some organizations implement comprehensive disaster recovery planning suites. A suite typically integrates various aspects of the disaster recovery planning process and helps organize roles, responsibilities, communication strategies, and recovery procedures.
Implementing Your Disaster Recovery Plan
Creating a disaster recovery plan is only the first step. The plan must also be implemented and maintained.
Initiating the disaster response with a checklist
One way that organizations implement a disaster recovery plan is by developing a detailed checklist outlining steps for various disaster scenarios. A checklist ensures systematic recovery actions, reduces human error during recovery, and speeds up recovery. Checklists can include high-level actions, such as contacting key staff members or switching to an alternative power source, and step-by-step instructions for technical recovery tasks.
The importance of regular testing
Regularly test various aspects of your disaster recovery plan helps identify weaknesses, verifies that all components work as expected, and familiarizes the team with their roles during a crisis. Testing may include conducting simulations of disaster scenarios.
Update the plan
Periodically review and update your disaster recovery plan, considering changes in technology, infrastructure, or organizational structure. For example, if your backup vendor updates its software user interface, you may need to revise your step-by-step instructions to align with the new interface.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is a reasonable expectation for recovery point and time objectives?
A: Setting RPO and RTO depends on how critical the data is and the operational needs of the business. Here is a reasonable expectation for these objectives:
RPO: For critical systems, continuous data protection solutions can create recovery points every few minutes or even every 30 seconds. Real-time database replication ensures minimal data loss, guaranteeing the recoverability of all data up to the moment of failure.
RTO: Recovery times can vary based on business needs. For highly critical operations, organizations may aim for recovery within minutes. Less critical functions might allow for recovery within a few hours.
Q: How often should a disaster recovery plan be tested or updated?
A: There is no hard rule about how frequently you should test or update disaster recovery plans. I recommend revisiting your disaster recovery plan every six months or whenever you make significant architectural or technical changes. You should also revisit the plan if a major data recovery event has occurred.
Q: Can small businesses benefit from implementing a disaster recovery plan?
A: Absolutely, even small businesses can benefit significantly from having a disaster recovery plan in place. While it may not need to be as extensive as those in large enterprises, a solid plan ensures that data protection and business continuity are prioritized.
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