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Coleman Communications
Coleman Communications

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery refers to an establishment's potential to respond to and recover from a disaster that disrupts normal work operations. The main objective of disaster recovery system is to help the entity regain access to critical systems and IT infrastructure as soon as possible after a disaster event. Organizations frequently perform an in-depth analysis of their systems to prepare for this and create a formal document to follow in times of crisis. This is referred to as a disaster recovery plan.

Disaster recovery revolves around serious events. These occurrences are frequently associated with natural disasters, but they can also be caused by system or technical failure, or by deliberate attack. They are severe enough to disrupt or completely halt critical functions for an extended period.

Some examples include natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, etc or even terrorist activities, cyber-attacks, DDoS and ransomware attacks, equipment failure and power outages.

Before determining any disaster recovery strategies, a business must first assess its current assets and responsibilities. Disaster recovery decision-making is typically influenced by two distinct analyses:

Risk assessment is required to assess all potential hazards that the business may face, as well as their outcomes. Risks can differ considerably depending on the business type and geographic location. At Coleman Communications, we can assess and identify potential hazards, define who or what these hazards would harm, and use the findings to develop procedures that account for these risks.

Studying the business impact gives an idea of the effects of the previously stated risks on company operations. A business impact analysis can aid in the prediction and quantification of both financial and non-financial costs. It also looks at how various disasters affect an organization’s safety, investments, advertising, corporate image, legal compliance, and quality control.

Disaster Recovery Plan

Our team of disaster recovery experts can thoroughly review all the risks and the business impacts of such risks to your organisation.  We will outline all the risk factors, recovery goals, all the possible scenarios in the event of a disaster and the technology environment of your company. Following this we can draft a thorough disaster recovery plan that will formally outline all the above-mentioned details and how the company should respond in the event of a disruption or disaster. The plan specifies recovery objectives, as well as the steps that the organisation must take to mitigate the effects of the disaster.

Each disaster recovery plan (DRP) is tailored to individual organisations or institutions and based on client specifications our DRP can include the following:

  • A goals statement that will describe what the company hopes to accomplish during or after a disaster, including the recovery time objective (RTO) and the recovery point objective (RPO). RTO refers to the amount of time an organization estimates its systems can be down without causing significant or irreparable damage to the business.For instance, normal business operations should resume within 2 hours of system failure or any disaster to avoid undesirable impacts to business continuity. The recovery point objective stipulates how much data (in terms of most recent changes) the business is prepared to lose in the event of a disaster. For example, if an RPO is to lose no more than three hours of data, data backupsis required to take place at least every three hours to meet this goal.
  • Specification of personnelresponsible for carrying out the disaster recovery plan and make arrangements if certain staff responsible for the DRP become unavailable. This will include detailing contact information for key staff members.
  • An up-to-date IT inventory should also include information about all hardware and software tools, as well as any cloud services required for the business operations, whether they are vital to the company and if they are owned, rented, or used as a service.
  • The DRP must specify how all data is backed up – location, using what hardware/software, and in which folders – as well as how the DR team should recover each asset from backup.Also, a list of the software and systems that will be used by staff during the recovery.
  • Disaster recovery procedures in the DRP should detail all emergency management procedures, such as last- minute data storage and backups, countermeasures to disasters, damage control, and cybersecurity threat elimination. This will include a detailed description of disaster response actions taken immediately after an incident.
  • A disaster recovery siteis vital in a comprehensive DRP. All data can be frequently backed up to or replicated at a disaster recovery site, which can be located remotely and houses all critical systems. When a disaster strikes, operations can be immediately switched to the recovery site. This will obviously include the instructions on how to get to the recovery site.
  • Most importantly our DRP will include detailed restoration procedures for recovering from a system failure or a halt to business operations.  This will include templates for a range of system recoveries, including vendor technical documentation.
  • Insurance coverage outline and planned actions to deal with financial and legal issues.

Importance of a disaster recovery system

Undoubtedly, a DRP outlines types of situations for minimising disruptions and quickly returning operational processes to normal in the event of a crisis. It is a critical component of the business contingency planning and should be aimed at preventing data loss while also allowing for adequate IT recovery. A DRP can also benefit a company in a variety of other ways -

DRPs include a variety of elements that can help to reduce costs.  Prevention strategies can immensely reduce the costs associated with man-made catastrophes. When problems do occur, detection procedures are likely to quickly identify them, and corrective measures restore lost data and allow for a quick resumption of operations.

Many organisations and business from different sectors rely on one another to always have their business operational and any outage in a single business may have far resonating consequences on other entities as well. Many regulations as well necessitate that businesses support more stringent availability standards. Therefore, having a full-detailed DRP is now becoming a requirement for any business.

DRP enables companies to determine innovative solutions to lower the costs of archive maintenance, backups, and recovery. Cloud-based data storage and associated systems improve and streamline the process while also increasing flexibility and scalability. DRPs can reduce the likelihood of human error, reduce unnecessary hardware, and optimise the entire IT workflow. As a result, one of the benefits of disaster recovery planning is that it streamlines the business and makes it more commercially viable and resilient before something goes wrong.

Downtime or outages is not easily overlooked by customers, particularly if they lead to loss of critical material. Contingency planning assists organisations in meeting and sustaining a good quality service in any event. Controlling the risks that your users experience due to loss of data and downtime shows your client that they receive better service from you during and after a disaster, thereby increasing their loyalty.

To know more, please contact us. Our team of experts are here to help you design and implement a disaster recovery plan that will be customized to your business.

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NETWORK ADMIN

Includes scheduled on-site visits, asset management and a dedicated network admin.

NETWORK ADMIN

Includes scheduled on-site visits, asset management and a dedicated network admin.

NETWORK ADMIN

Includes scheduled on-site visits, asset management and a dedicated network admin.

CENTRALISED SERVICES

Comprises firewall management, desktop optimisation, anti-virus/anti-spam management and 24/7 monitoring.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT SERVICES

Involves access, incident and problem management with on-site support and a remote customer service desk.

MyCIO

A consultancy business plan with vendor management, quarterly executive services and ongoing review meetings.