Disaster Recovery

In its simplest terms disaster recovery is the process, policies and procedures of restoring operations critical to the resumption of business, including regaining access to data , communications , workspace, and other business processes after a natural or human-induced disaster.

To increase the opportunity for a successful recovery of valuable records, a well-established and thoroughly tested disaster recovery plan must be developed. This task requires the cooperation of a well-organised committee led by an experienced chairperson.

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) should also include plans for coping with the unexpected or sudden loss of communications and/or key personnel, disaster recovery planning is part of a larger process known as business continuity planning (BCP).

Business Continuity Planning

A completed BCP cycle results in a formal printed manual available for reference before, during, and after disruptions have occurred. Its purpose is to reduce adverse stakeholder impacts determined by both the disruption’s scope (who and what it affects) and duration (how bad, implications last for hours, months etc).

BCP methodology is scalable for an organisation of any size and complexity. Even though the methodology has roots in regulated industries, any type of organisation may create a BCP manual, and arguably every organisation should have one in order to ensure the organisation’s longevity.

A BCP manual for a small organisation may be simply a printed manual stored safely away from the primary work location, containing the names, addresses, and phone numbers for crisis management staff, general staff members, clients, and vendors along with the location of the offsite data backup storage media, copies of insurance contracts, and other critical materials necessary for organisational survival. At its most complex, a BCP manual may outline a secondary work site, technical requirements and readiness, regulatory reporting requirements, work recovery measures, the means to re-establish physical records, the means to establish a new supply chain, or the means to establish new production centres. Firms should ensure that their BCP manual is realistic and easy to use during a crisis. As such, BCP sits alongside crisis management and disaster recovery planning and is a part of an organisation’s overall risk management.

The development of a DR Plan can have five main phases:

-Analysis
-Solution design
-Implementation
-Testing and acceptance
-Maintenance