We’ve blogged many times about disaster recovery. In particular, why it is so important that you have a disaster recovery plan in place to minimise downtime to your business if the worst should happen.
Yet, recent figures suggest that even those who do have a plan in place, aren’t entirely confident that they would be able to execute their plan if required. In fact, the figures show that only 35% of UK businesses have full confidence in their disaster recovery plans. The figures come from a poll* of 400 IT decision makers from across the UK.
This is against a back drop of increasing occurrences of cyber-attacks, which can cause considerable downtime for IT systems and lead to significant data loss.
The study also showed that only 50% of those surveyed had tested their DR processes in the past 12 months.
What are the business risks associated with a disaster?
Disaster events cause downtime. Whether that disaster is due to a natural event, a cyber-attack or human error. With downtime come a range of risks. Many of which can be particularly detrimental for small business who have fewer resources:
How can you improve confidence in your disaster recovery plan?
If your business isn’t confident that they could execute their disaster recovery plan, there are many things you can do to boost this:
Firstly, make sure you have a plan in place – it may seem obvious, but many businesses still don’t have a disaster recovery plan or business continuity plan in place. So get back to basics and think about writing a plan if you haven’t already.
Gain buy in from around the business – It is no good if just your IT team are aware of your disaster recovery plan. You need buy in from all departments and all levels of management across your business to truly be able to execute your plan successfully if required.
Train your key staff – Following on from the point above, key staff named in your disaster recovery plan must undergo training in executing the plan. It would be a disaster if during a disaster you were to discover uncertainty or that part of your plan didn’t work as you’d expected.
Update your disaster recovery plan – your plan must be based on your current business circumstances so if any significant changes occur, make sure you reflect these in your disaster recovery plan.
Employ the services of a disaster recover expert like First Recovery – At First Recovery we work hard with our clients to ensure that within 24 hours of a disaster striking, key staff are set up in a disaster recovery centre with back up IT systems. We can also assist with the creation of your disaster recovery plan, with all customers getting access to the BRIO tool (Business Recovery Information Online) – an online disaster recovery planning tool.
You may find that specialist disaster recovery services aren’t as expensive as you’d expect. We offer a range of packages, all of which are aimed at SME’s and smaller businesses. Do contact us today if you want to discuss your disaster recovery requirements.
*Poll carried out by Databarracks, 2019.