How to Make a Disaster Recovery Plan for Your Business?
Businesses have important and sensitive data that they must protect to prevent losses. Whether it is a natural disaster or a man-made one, a disaster can strike at any time and it is imperative that businesses be prepared to deal with such delicate situations. Every business must have a data backup and disaster recovery plan should their systems in the office location get destroyed or attacked. If you don’t already have one, here is how to make a disaster recovery plan for your business.
Identifying assets
The first step is to identify critical assets which must be protected to keep the business running. For example, if you are IT company, you need to make sure that your project data, your systems as well as your servers are all secured. If you own a retail store, the critical assets would be your merchandise and the cash at the counter. Once you know what needs to be protected, you can start chalking out a plan.
Identify risks – potential disasters that can lead to loss
Client data is often the most important asset that businesses can lose. You lose your customer data and you lose everything. You will not be able to communicate with your customers and even have a record of the business you have done with them. That is totally disastrous for the business. So if you have data in physical files and books, you face the threat of fire, or damage due to moisture or bookworms. If the data is in digital form, the risks include hacking, deletion or corruption of data due to viruses etc.
Protecting employee and client information
Make sure that every bit of important data about your employees and tour clients is stored in remote locations which are secure and protected at times of trouble. Sometimes, sensitive client information like passwords or account details can be exposed by hackers f you don’t have the right security measures in place. Talk to a network security expert to ensure that all data n your network is protected through firewall and also encryption.
Have an inventory
One of the most important steps of creating a disaster recovery plan is to make an inventory of all the assets you need to protect. Be it data, equipment or anything else, make sure you have a physical inventory or list that will make it easier for you to assess the damage and also execute the right disaster recovery plan.