When you’re in charge of the company’s data, there’s a lot of pressure on your shoulders. Disasters, both physical and virtual, can happen at any time. When disaster strikes, your team will need to react quickly to get the business back up and running. Make sure you work with the experienced professionals at Braden Business Systems to come up with a plan for how to respond and recover when disaster strikes.
Have a Data Backup Strategy In Place
Developing a response strategy is the first step in any disaster recovery plan. Develop the plan as a group to make sure everyone is on the same page, and then share your plan with other members of your team. This will instill confidence that not all is lost when disaster strikes.
The second step is thinking about where your data is stored. Is it only stored in one location like an in-house server? Is it stored in multiple locations on portable drives? Do you use the cloud to store data? If the business caught fire and all the servers on the premises were destroyed, being able to rely on backups is essential to keeping business moving forward without major interruptions.
When it comes to deciding where, how, and how often to backup your data, Braden Business Solutions can help. We can find reliable and protected backup solutions for your business. Using apps such as OneDrive and Google Drive are consumer-grade and not as dependable as an offsite cloud storage solution.
There’s a good chance that there will be hiccups in service while backups are being restored, so keep in mind that part of your strategy should be customer facing. Determine how you will communicate with employees, customers, and the public to keep everyone calm and let them know when service will be restored.
Prepare an IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Once you have a backup solution in place, it’s important to plan how your team will react in a disaster. Work with your management team, insurance, IT team, and cybersecurity to create your plan. It is very seldom that the first plan is the best plan. It’s an evolutionary process, and it will change and be adjusted depending on the incident and the people available. If there is no plan in place, you’ll be making critical decisions in stressful situations. This can often lead to bigger issues.
First, check that your insurance company is providing you with appropriate coverage. Many insurance companies require a special policy to insure IT equipment. It’s important to know the true value of your equipment and make sure you have enough coverage.
Now this is where your plan comes in. Your team will need to prioritize which systems need to come back first. Doing this in a process, piece by piece, gives everyone an important task to focus on without panicking. Although everything may seem stressful in the moment, falling back to an established plan provides order and confidence.
Test Your Backup Strategy and Disaster Recovery With Fire Drills
How do you know your plan will work? Test it. It’s a good idea to get into the habit of regular testing of your backup strategy and disaster recovery with “fire drills.” Like a fire drill at school or at work, the important thing is to remain calm, keep order, and stick to the plan. You can run your own “fire drills” by temporarily turning off a service or a system and prompt your IT team to follow your plan to restore working order.
While this may seem like a waste of time out of the business day, it’s actually a very important step to finalizing your disaster recovery plan. It’s during these “fire drills” that you’ll notice where there are holes in your plan, or where someone did something out of turn that disrupted the cycle. Get everyone involved in these drills to simulate a real scenario. Make sure all departments work together during these drills to ensure a successful outcome.
Find Where Your Data Backup Strategy and Recovery Plan Is Lacking with Help from Braden Business Systems
If your business needs help with data recovery solutions or needs a recovery plan strategy, turn to the professionals at Braden Business Solutions. We can help fill the holes in your data recovery plan as well as provide data backup solutions to help restore your important business data faster. Call Braden Business Systems today.