What Is An IT Disaster Recovery Policy?
An IT disaster recovery policy is a clear set of guidelines that defines how your business would respond to a major unexpected disaster. The policy is an official document which presents all of the procedures the business will take in the event of a disaster.
A disaster recovery policy is often confused with a disaster recovery plan. Both are essential assets for business continuity planning, however, they are different.
A recovery plan differs from a policy as it is a comprehensive and well-thought-out set of scenarios that covers almost every eventuality which may disrupt your business. However, it is not a set-in-stone policy document.
An IT disaster recovery plan and policy are both needed to come up with the disaster recovery solutions you need to keep your business processes operational and recoverable.
Why Is A Disaster Recovery Policy Needed?
A DR plan and policy are needed as they can help you discover your most critical business assets. It also helps stakeholders understand how you can continue business operations in the event of a disaster.
Disasters can cause significant financial & reputational damage which is why it’s important for you to know how long your business can afford to be offline and how much data loss it can tolerate.
Your recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) are the goals which measure the length of time and amount of data your business can tolerate losing during disruptive events.
Types of business disasters include:
Human User Error – Unintentional actions or the lack of action made by the computer user e.g falling victim to phishing emails or forgetting to password-protect important files
Power Outages – An unplanned power outage can cause power supply disruptions
Server Issues – The crash of your server may cause disruptions to your website, emails and shared business data
Fire Damage – Even after a fire is put out, smoke damage can cause equipment failure
Severe Weather – Natural disasters such as storms, floods and wildfires can harm your business and employees
Unexpected Updates – Unexpected updates can cause equipment failure
Types Of IT Disaster Recovery Strategies
Virtualised Disaster Recovery
Virtual disaster recovery lets you create a working mirror of your computer and run it on a virtual environment. Should anything happen to the physical equipment at your primary site, your virtualised servers can get everything back up and running again at a second disaster recovery site.
Network Disaster Recovery
Network disaster recovery ensures that there is adequate access to backup data and sites in the event of an emergency. This keeps communication, application access and data sharing possible.
Cloud Disaster Recovery
Cloud makes your business more agile and secure. A cloud disaster recovery policy will ensure an automatic failover to a public cloud in the event of disaster, which can significantly reduce your downtime.
Data Centre Disaster Recovery
If data, software and hardware systems are destroyed then data centre recovery can aid in your disaster recovery efforts.
Recovery As A Service
At Intraource we help to keep your IT and data safe with a multi-layered, managed approach that is bespoke to your business.
Protect your business at every stage with our 24/7 IT Support or contact our IT Consultants for more information on IT Policies and DR Planning.
