Disaster
Recovery

What is disaster recovery?

 

Disaster Recovery (DR) encompasses the procedures, policies or processes that prepare an organization’s vital IT infrastructure to effectively recover from natural or human-induced disasters, and ensure business continuity.

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From cyber-attacks and equipment failure, through hurricanes or other natural disasters – DR needs to cover any possible scenario that threatens the availability of IT infrastructure. In recent years, Disaster Recovery has assumed an increasingly predominant role in enterprise computing budgets, often accounting for 20-25% of IT computing expenses.

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Having the right disaster recovery plan

 

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) delineates how an organization will respond to any given disaster scenario, with the goal of supporting time-sensitive business processes and functions, and maintaining full business continuity.

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A DRP contains both responsive and preventative elements, and is a key part of company’s Business Continuity Planning (BCP). On the responsive side, a DRP delineates numerous disaster scenarios, and defines the detailed responses to each, with the aim of minimizing that event’s negative impact. On the preventative side, a DRP aims to minimize the negative effects of specific scenarios by defining what the organization needs to do in order to avoid them.

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More specifically, a DRP needs to anticipate and delineate a plan of action in response to the loss of such mission-critical IT components and services as:

• Complete computer room environments

• Critical IT hardware including network infrastructure, servers, desktop or laptop computers, wireless devices, and peripherals

• Service provider connectivity

• Enterprise software applications

• Data storage devices or applications