How deep does your disaster recovery plan go?
Disaster recovery is a concept that every business knows. However, most businesses do not fully understand how it works. They also do not know how much of their business can actually recover from a data disaster. There are many different ways to protect a business from data loss. Each implementation is unique. The disaster recovery team makes choices that shape the plan.
Having a disaster recovery plan does not guarantee full protection from data-related disasters. In fact, the current plan might cover less than expected. The structure of the plan determines how much is actually protected. Many businesses would be surprised by how little is truly covered.
Not All Disaster Recovery is Equal
Having a disaster recovery plan is like having building insurance. It is very unlikely that your team has truly prepared for every possible disaster. Just as your insurance only covers specific kinds of disasters like flood or theft, your disaster recovery plan protects you only from disasters that your team has anticipated and prepared for.
This means there is a practical limit to how much disaster recovery you can plan for. There will always be edge cases. A rare disaster could, in theory, catch you completely off guard.
The real question is how effective your current disaster recovery plan is. How many types of disaster can it handle? To what extent can it protect your business?
The Website-Only Backup
One of the most common types of disaster recovery plans only covers your business website. Website development or hosting companies often offer these plans as a courtesy. They do this because it is easy for them to make backups if your site is already hosted on their servers.
A backup of your entire website is incredibly useful. This is especially true if you store an archive of backups on the cloud. This setup ensures that no matter what happens to your website. Whether it’s a hacker attack or a programming error, you can always restore the last working version.
For a modern business with a strong online presence, this kind of backup is vital. When combined with backups of the associated databases, which is common with modern CMS platforms like WordPress, you can even restore your website on a new host server if the original one fails.
But a website and database backup should never be your only solution.
Active File Backups
Another partial backup solution is only to worry about your active or sensitive files. Many businesses that are not technically oriented considered only consider certain files to be worthy of a recovery plan. Your managers may think "What files can't my team live without?". While the files that fit this description are very important to back up, often what is considered is an incomplete picture of all the assets your teams really need to do their jobs.
The purpose of disaster recovery is to get your business back on its feet quickly, thumbing your nose at the hacker or electrical storm that might have taken you out of commission for weeks of infrastructure rebuilding. But only including key files and active projects in your disaster recovery plan is like saying that a single filing cabinet contains everything you need to run a business. Ask yourself this instead:
"How long did it take to set up the business network and workstations?"
"How long would it take to set them up again with only my key files backed up?"
In many cases, a disaster plan that only covers key files and active projects will still overlook irreplaceable assets like everyone's company emails and historical documents that are not currently active. Restoring from an entire system loss using this kind of limited backup is very costly and time-consuming. The financial toll this takes on your business has been known to sink smaller companies, if the delays requires to implement recovery from a selective backup don't tank the business on logistics alone.
Local Backups and Archives
It is increasingly unwise to handle your own disaster recovery plan locally. In days before the cloud, this was the most practical and, in fact, the only way to create much-needed backups. However, it is no longer the best solution because this puts your backups at the same amount of risk as your local system, effectively defeating the point of having backups in the first place.
When you store a backup for disaster recovery purposes, it must be stored on at least one physical server. Local backups are stored locally, meaning on servers your company owns that, likely, share an internal network with the rest of your business computers. Unfortunately, this means that any digital or physical threat that puts your network at risk can also wipe out your backups. A malware program that infects your network and corrupts files may also be able to corrupt your backups and a flood that destroys your computers will likely also take out your storage servers.
When it comes right down to it, the majority of home-made disaster recovery plans are going to be incomplete simply because a comprehensive plan requires, not just intuition, but advanced backup software and incredible thoroughness. Not to mention a lot of cloud storage. There is a way to make your entire business data infrastructure completely disaster proof, but it will take time, dedication, and the help of experienced disaster recovery experts. If you'd like more information on improving your business's disaster recovery plan, contact us today!
