How Did Your IT Operations Fair in the Storm?
The need to protect critical data and network infrastructure should be a priority of every firm’s IT operations. Network/data disruptions caused by sudden outages can seriously impact your business. Potential revenue and productivity losses due to these disruptions are no longer measured in days but in hours or even minutes. Thus, it’s important to ensure that your current disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) plans prepare your IT systems as well as staff to continue working under both minor and severe disaster interruptions. The recent stormy weather in the mid-Atlantic region and the prolonged power outages in their wake highlight this need.
The following tips can help guide you during your DR plan development or enhancement:
- Consider the entire business operations, including staff, information, tasks, goals, etc., when developing your plans. IT is not a standalone function; it supports your whole business.
- Identify problem areas, either recurring issues in the past or potential gaps in the future. Focus on the connection between your core business and the IT department. Then, seek solutions for them.
- Conduct impact analysis to find the balance between your budget and the level of protection your business needs. Some examples are: server, application, network, performance, and data protection levels.
- Communicate with everyone in your firm to find out how their jobs might be affected by the network/data disruptions caused by unexpected outages.
- Locate your physical datacenters in diverse and distant locations.
- Get upper management support and ensure that executive members understand the plan details thoroughly.
- Share the plan with all your employees and review it with them regularly.
- Test your DR plan periodically to ensure it fits your organizational needs since improvements or changes may be required as your firm grows or takes different directions.
These are some basics. If you have these bases covered you’re better off than many organizations. If not, we want to help. Send us an email if you would like to receive the details on attending our webinar all about Disaster Recoveryon September 27, 2012 at 10am.
