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As the incidences of cyber crimes and data theft continue to escalate in terms of scale and frequency, there is an unprecedented need to revisit disaster recovery plans. Enterprise data must be protected from natural or manmade disasters that seriously impact business continuity.
Considering the sheer variety of threats and their potential to cripple business activities, one should not be content only with the existing Disaster Recovery plan. The disaster recovery plans must be thoroughly assessed, reviewed, and updated on continuous basis.
You need to tune your Disaster Recovery plan to the ever evolving cyber attacks by adopting the most recent technologies and tools to make sure that the mission critical data assets are seamlessly secured with ability to rapidly and easily recover following any untoward event.
Scrutiny of threats and probable responses
A comprehensive study of all possible business risks is essential to design bespoke Disaster Recovery plans to handle every type of threat. You will also have to categorize the probable disruptors by understanding probability and frequency of occurrence. This will help prioritize your Disaster Recovery plans.
The easiest way to analyze the Disaster Recovery scenarios is to understand the gravity and probability of occurrence. Most often it is found that cyber threats rank among the most likely interruptions to the ongoing business activities. Obviously, cyber attacks should be assigned higher priority in comparison with acts of God such as earthquakes, tornadoes, fire, and so forth.
Analysis of impact on business
This is also an important determinant of priorities in designing and planning of Disaster Recovery strategies. It is known as Business Impact Analysis or BIA in short. By performing BIA for every available system, one can easily draft an appropriate Disaster Recovery plan. Identification as well as evaluation of effects must be carried out by studying contractual, legal, financial, and regulatory implications of a possible disruption. You can also include other important factors such as organization’s reputation that may be impacted by unplanned events.
The major focus of Business Impact Analysis as far as the security is concerned will cover business continuity, privacy, and integrity.
The entire exercise of Business Impact Analysis is designed to outline dependencies and priorities of IT systems, so that you are in a better position to chalk out strategies that are aimed at mitigation of business loss at the end of the day.
One cannot jump to perform a Business Impact Analysis unless the right policy for a proposed Disaster Recovery plan is drafted. You will have a robust contingency plan ready that takes into account priorities with reference to your business. In addition to NIST, there are a great number of templates waiting to be downloaded from other reliable sources.
Shifting focus
It observed that most of the Disaster Recovery strategies are excessively focused on these technology aspects and thereby missing out a couple of very vital components including process and people. An ideal plan for Disaster Recovery must be an all-inclusive exercise that gives equal significance to every factor which is critical to the business continuity.
It is wrong to limit Disaster Recovery plan to only the technology related factors because one must be capable of recovering every business-critical factor. Availability of staff members who are assigned with critical duties of responding to the call in the event of a disaster is extremely essential. You should have all necessary contact details to access these core team members even at the odd hours.
Building a rapport with concerned authorities much before the disaster can help in the crisis period. You must assign individuals with good communication skills to deal with outside agencies, clients, and staff.
Significance of Disaster Recovery updates
Every time there is an alteration or modification in terms of the internal systems, one must carry out Disaster Recovery update exercise. These updates can also cover major applications that can be vital to the business processes. Since there is a constant change on the horizon of technology, one should make sure that the Disaster Recovery plan is modified every time a new technology initiative is performed.
Modern technologies are developing at break neck speed, thanks to the affordability and availability of compute power. This puts a great strain on internal systems that must fall in line with the latest technological developments by exhibiting remarkable resilience.
Cloud consideration
Cloud is increasingly becoming an ideal resource for availing Disaster Recovery as a Service or DRaaS. Cloud based Disaster Recovery service offers outstanding economy and convenience to help companies become disaster-ready without spending fortunes.
Appreciating the urgency
Procrastination can be a disaster by itself because of the endemic nature of cyber crimes that are hitting organization where it hurts. Preparing a disaster recovery plan after going through the event can prove to be fatal for any organization. You need to empower systems, technologies, and people in your organizations with ability to respond to a disaster without losing precious moments.
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