Disaster Recovery Planning for SMEs

Disaster recovery is usually undertaken during a natural or man-made disaster. Disaster planning is also called contingency planning or business continuity planning.

Importance: Disaster recovery planning is basically used as insurance against tremendous monetary and intangible losses. It is used for the prevention of data loss. In this regard it overlaps with risk and content management. The primary aim of DRP is to minimise the impact that such an event will have on the business. A disaster recovery plan has to be well-structured and flexible in nature. This provides system administrators and managers with the reassurance that the company is equipped to deal with disaster in case it does take place. Existence of DRP also ensures company personnel that a disaster can be stopped in developmental stages before turning into a major disaster.

Reasons Leading to DRP: Every business faces the threat of disaster. These can take the form of:

• Natural disasters of floods, fires, earthquakes



• Man-made disasters including terrorism, sabotage, and crime



• Human error disasters relating to accidental deletions of data, worker strikes and blackouts



• Computer disasters of equipment failure, viruses, spyware leading to data corruption

• Risk analysis



• Creation of disaster recovery plan



• Providing staff with disaster recovery training



• Regularly auditing of disaster recovery systems and procedures

• Ability to maintain and resume functional business trading



• Safeguarding business reputation, brand and image



• Reducing downtime via mitigation of disasters



• Preventing loss of customers to competitors due to inability to trade



• Increasing confidence of associates, clients, investors and business partners

• Identification of core elements of the firm: These include finance, business processes, human resources and information technology. The step of identification also comprises of a S.W.O.T. analysis and assigning monetary values for each asset using the system of Annual Loss Expectancy (A.L.E.) calculation. The ALE calculation is done usually by multiplying the potential frequency of the occurrence of the disaster with the monetary sterling value loss per instance.



• Prioritisation of areas affecting the shopfloor or the frontline. Next in order is to assign responsibilities for each of these spheres to suitable personnel.



• Defining needs, expectations, demands and goals of customers, suppliers and stakeholders



• Conducting potential disaster scenarios to determine reactivity time of suitable responses



• DRP strategy communication throughout the firm, at all levels. This also includes ensuring that necessary manpower, supplies and equipment are in place.



• Integration of DRP into annual business action plans. This also includes the time taken to test the DRP regularly to determine its functionality in accordance with internal changes.

• Backup: This is a wide area ranging from security backup measures to remote off-site backup.



• Implementation of anti-virus software



• Implementation of firewall protection



• Storage area networks to immediately make data available without the usage of formal power



• Uninterrupted power supply through UPS and backup generators



• Having fire protection measures of alarms, screen signals and accessible extinguishers



• Remote backup security measures of CDP or continuous data protection. CDP offers two backups with each being located in a different site. CDP also provides the facility of monitoring and tracking down entries to data. This protects data from unauthorised access.



• Have an insurance of the data on microfilm and store the records in a separate location

Article Source: http://www.rightarticle.com

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you are concerned about data loss and would like more information on Data Recovery see www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk

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