Disaster recovery planning is a process of creating a detailed action plan on how a company will respond in the event of disaster. Most companies are guilty of creating a disaster recovery plan only to meet insurance requirements or other contractual obligations. These plans should not only be kept up-to-date, but should also be put into practice and refined.  This ensures they always meet the goals and objectives originally laid out.

Reducing the Company Risk Overall

The entire point of creating a disaster recovery plan is for a business to understand its risks. It can then lay out the required steps to reduce them. Continuously reviewing and updating disaster recovery plans can do several things. First, a company can ask itself if the risks are the same as those originally identified. More may have been added, and some may have been removed. For a business, the largest enemy during a disaster is time. This is why a disaster recovery plan needs to be accurate and comprehensive. Any holes in the plan can result in an unsuccessful implementation. This means a business could potentially stay closed to the point of permanent shut down.

Testing and Maintaining the Plan

Even if a company has a disaster recovery plan, it won’t be good if it sits untouched for years. The goal of a recovery plan is to improve recovery times. Therefore, a plan should be tested and frequently updated to ensure that it is accurate and effective. In most instances, companies will create recovery plans and never test them again. A recovery plan should be tested and updated at least once every two years. For rapidly changing businesses, it should be tested and performed once a year.

Alleviating Owner and Investor Concerns

After a disaster recovery plan has been created, tested and stored, it should be made public to important stakeholders. This includes the owners and investors of the company itself. All feedback should be recorded. Each time the recovery plan is edited, it should be presented for additional feedback.

Day-to-Day Operations

The entire purpose of a disaster recovery plan is to quickly restore the day-to-day operations of the business. A business should be able to say with confidence that the plan would restore the day-to-day operations quickly. Though customers would be sympathetic to a company facing a disaster, that will only go so far. If the company does not recovery quickly, customers will move onto a company that is in working order. Therefore, the operations need to be restored quickly and efficiently to prevent any financial loss.

Regulation Compliance

Some companies have to comply with specific regulations during operation. In the disaster recovery plan, these companies will need to ensure they are still complying with those regulations. This is especially true in industries such as education, food service and healthcare.

Quick Response

A copy of the disaster recovery plan should be stored offsite for fast response. Since the business location could possibly be damaged, storing the recovery plan onsite will hinder or halt recovery. Companies might also consider partnering with a data center to store backup information offsite. Quick and easy access to data is the signature service of these facilities.