Testing a Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster can strike at any moment within your business, which is why you should have a good disaster recovery plan in place. Without a good plan in place, then it is fair to say that your staff will be running around, wondering what to do next. That is not a situation you want to find yourself in. You want business to continue as usual while your company figures out how to figure out a particular disaster. Whether that is data center failure or a natural disaster, you have to have a plan in place so that you don’t lose your customers. You would be surprised at how much money a company can lose in just a matter of days from when a disaster strikes.
When you have a disaster recovery plan in place, you are doing what is necessary to make sure that your business can serve customers to the best of its ability. Even if it cannot service all, serving some can make an incredible difference. A company that does not have a disaster recovery plan in place is a company that can go out of business in a heartbeat. This is because their customers were not aware of the situation and thought the company was giving them bad service.
Types of testing
There are several different types of testing that you can use when testing a disaster recovery plan. You can do walkthrough testing, simulation testing, checklist testing, full interruption testing, and parallel testing.
Many companies decide to go ahead with a checklist to then proceed to a simulation test. The simulation test is important so that employees know what to do when a disaster actually occurs. The company may decide to do a full interruption test while doing a simulation test, but that really depends on if the company has the type of budget that will allow for this type of testing.
Testing your plan
There are many different disasters that can take place. You may have a fire in the building, you may have some sort of natural disaster such as an earthquake, or your entire data center can fail. Although data centers are very reliable and it is rare that they fail, it does tend to be the most common failure. Suddenly, employees are unable to retrieve customer information. That is why you need to check the following with your disaster recovery plan:
- The feasibility of your recovery plan – Making sure that backup facilities are feasible – Ensure the adequacy of the procedures and make sure teams are working on their part – Ensure the training of team managers – Providing all employees with the means to maintain and update the recovery plan – Making sure an acceptable amount of time to recover has been established – Ensure that every location within the company is prepared – Verify the cost to perform the test to ensure that the budget is adhered to
From there, you need the entire staff to go into “pretend” mode and simulate that a disaster is really occurring. For example, the data center failure recovery plan may be the first one that you want to test. Now, if you are on a strict budget when conducting your test, you may have to work on testing multiple scenarios at once so that all you have to do is one test. You may require two if you have a lot of issues that need fixed. Once they are fixed, it is very important to test them to make sure they will work. Once you have determined that you have a solid plan, you can be rest assured that you’ll be in good shape when a disaster actually occurs.
Reasons to have a Disaster Recovery Plan in Place
Emergencies happen within a business. That is something that is inevitable. You never know when an entire system is going to crash or another disaster may come about. You have to be prepared for these things. If you?re not, then everything will be chaotic. No one will know what to do. In other words, everyone will be running around asking each other, ?What do we do now?? And no one is going to have an answer.
What is a disaster recovery plan?
A disaster recovery plan is that protocol in which your employees follow when a certain disaster comes about. You have to evaluate everything that could go wrong within your business and have a recovery plan for each one of those situations. Since not one situation is the same, there has to be a protocol for each. From there, your employees have to study it and know what to do immediately. This means they need to memorize. There are many disasters that do not allow time for someone to pull out a manual and read what needs to happen. They have to act immediately.
But why have a disaster recovery plan in place? You should have one in place because you need to conduct business in the best manner possible for your customers. Your customers expect seamless service no matter what, so you have to try to make things as convenient for them as possible. If you don?t, then you risk losing their business.
Your disaster recovery plan will include dealing with data loss during a natural disaster, dealing with a system meltdown, power surges, data center crashes and so much more. It depends on what sort of business you are in as to what kind of plans you use. Just make sure that you cover all of your bases and that you also have a master plan so that you can take care of something that may not have a plan. You just never know what could happen.
Statistics
Statistics have shown that businesses with a disaster recovery plan are amongst those that recover better. Those who have experienced some sort of disaster that lasts for more than 10 days will never recover financially. 50% of those companies without a disaster recovery plan will spend so much time making up for lost cash that they will most likely be out of business in 5 years. That is not something you want to have to deal with. The cost of an outage that lasts only a few days is already bad enough. Contracts can be broken, credibility can be lost, and even future customers will never be acquired. These are extreme losses.
So take these statistics to heart so that you know why it is you need a disaster recovery plan. Not one more business needs to go out of business due to an outage, so you need to be on top of things. You need to realize that anything that prohibits you from carrying out your business practices can do irreparable damages. Your customers expect for you to be there for them whenever they need you. There is nothing more frustrating to them than trying to resolve an issue that you can?t resolve because of an outage. If their request is not fulfilled, then they may suddenly become your competitor?s newest customer.
This should be enough to convince you. It is much easier to come up with a disaster recovery plan than to have to deal with a crisis blind. Imagine your entire business being shut down due to something out of your control. Now imagine sitting there with a thousand questions flying at you about what to do.
How to Evaluate Business Continuity Services
Business continuity is a matter of business survival. If you?re not sure what it is, it is what you do to make sure everything is up and running in the case of a disaster. Many companies have a business continuity plan, which means they will be prepared in case of an earthquake, a power surge, or another disaster that could keep them from doing business.
A business continuity service can help a business continue their business operations. This is usually because data center storage and other functions are taken care of off-site and usually from another place in the world. However, what this does is allow the business to retrieve the information that they need. In many cases, customers are not even aware that there is a problem. They don?t need to know that there is a problem. All they need to know is that their situation was taken care of accordingly. They don?t have to know about anything that is going on within your business.
Evaluating a business continuity service
To find the right business continuity service, you need to evaluate the service. First, you need to look at the continuity managed services they offer. If they offer things that you don?t need, then see if they can offer you just what you need. A lot of business continuity services have plans that you can choose from. Basically, you are able to customize your plan to what you need. Only you know what your business truly needs, so you should be able to have a choice within reason.
To really find out if they are everything they say that they are, you can check with the Better Business Bureau or similar organization in their area. You can also check online reviews and such. Someone somewhere has most likely said something about the business. They have either talked about how well the business did for them or how horrible their service was. Yes, it is very hard to satisfy everyone, but you can more or less pinpoint negative reviews or statements that are from hard to please people.
As you continue on in their research, make sure you ask the business continuity service a lot of questions. Ask them any questions about things that concern you. Also see about a trial period. Although it is slim that you?ll experience a disaster, you can possibly arrange a testing of the service to see how well they come through for you. You want to see how seamless they are when it comes to continuing on your services when your business is dealing with a disaster.
The advantages
The advantages are quite evident. First of all, you’re not alone in dealing with a disaster. Second, you do not have to answer a thousand questions from your employees. Third, your employees will know more about what is going on. That means they are less likely to panic when disaster strikes. The last thing you need during a disaster is a lot of unnecessary panic. This can make things worse than what they already are.
The disaster itself is hard enough the way it is, so it is only right that you employ a business continuity service to ensure that things go as smooth as possible. You need to focus on those other things that are affected. You shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not you’re entering into a situation that could take years to recover from. Then again, there are times when a business encounters a disaster that they never recover from. With a business continuity service in place and a plan, disaster can be averted.