Every business and organization can experience a serious incident which can prevent it from continuing normal operations. This can happen any day at any time. The potential causes are many and varied: flood, explosion, computer malfunction, accident, grievous act... the list is endless.
What would you do if you and your staff were prevented from reaching your place of work for the next few days, next few years or forever? How quickly could you recover? What tools would need to be in place to help? How much would a robust Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) cost?
If a disaster recovery plan does not already exist, it will be necessary to initiate the preparation of the first version of such a plan. In order to initiate a planning project for the first time, the Board and/or top level management would normally receive a proposal.
Projects as important as DRP development should be approved at the highest level to ensure that the required level of commitment, resources and management attention are applied to the process.
The proposal should present the reasons for undertaking the project, and could include some or all of the following:
- Increased dependency by the business over recent years on computerised production and sales delivery mechanisms, thereby creating increased risk of loss of normal service
- Increased dependency by the business over recent years on computerised information systems
- Increased recognition of the impact that a serious incident could have on the business
- Need to establish a formal process to be followed when a disaster occurs
- An intention to lower costs or losses arising from serious incidents
- Increased likelihood of inadequate IT and information security safeguards
- Need to develop effective back up and recovery strategies to mitigate the impact of disruptive events
- Avoidance of business failure from disruptive incidents.
In its simplest form DRP would only need to include a Broadband connection in staff members' homes, a way of connecting them all together and the history (backup) of the Companies database and CRM tools
Call Westlake today to discuss DRP planning and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
