Why you NEED a disaster recovery plan

 

We’re not talking about digging a bunker in your back garden and filling a rucksack with tins of beans and medical supplies, we’re talking about making sure that you’ve got a cunning plan to turn to, in the event of an unforeseen disaster like the office catching fire, someone breaking in and trashing the place, or power outages affecting your systems.

Here’s why based on our experience, you should make sure you’ve got a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place.

 

It acts as a set of emergency instructions

Without a plan, if something terrible happens it puts everyone involved on the spot, and it can take longer for issues to be resolved, causing you more downtime. If there’s a plan in place, everyone knows what they’re doing.

For employees who are not cool, calm, and collected in a crisis (something you would have no way of knowing without seeing them in a crisis) having a disaster recovery plan can be incredibly valuable in laying out what exactly needs to happen to get your business, at the very least operational, as soon as possible. Panic can lead to poor judgement, and having a plan in place can minimise the risk of errors in the event of an emergency.

You don’t know what’s around the corner

Let’s take the pandemic for example. At the beginning of 2019, who could have predicted this?! It resulted in a huge scramble for business needing new systems in place to allow everyone to work from home. Admittedly, most people’s disaster recovery plans probably don’t include pandemics, but it does serve as an example as to why they’re so important.

 

Avoid disruption to customers

A disaster recovery plan will also allow you to ensure that your customers are being kept in the loop. It can include ways to make sure that communications channels between you and your customers are up and running as an absolute priority in the event of an emergency, to minimise the effects on them and help you provide them with reassurance.

Although we don’t want to be all doom and gloom, the reality is that there are only a couple of clicks on a dodgy email between you and disaster, a good disaster recovery (DR) plan should include the steps to take after a successful hacking attempt in order o minimise downtime and keep your data as accessible and safe as possible.

 

If you’d like to know more about creating a disaster recovery plan and what you should include in yours – please get in touch. Just give us a call on 01373 768024 or book a call in the calendar below: