Business Continuity: How To Build a Robust IT Disaster Recovery Plan

Modern businesses are increasingly challenged by a variety of threats. Geopolitical tensions, global pandemics, cybersecurity risks, technological disruptions — all these can negatively impact the profitability of your business. They can ruin the company's reputation or even cause its closure. One should have proper disaster recovery strategies and IT staff augmentation in place in order to ensure business continuity and resilience. The right approach can serve as the groundwork for employees to get a company back up and operating after an unexpected event.

Disaster recovery plans are clearly becoming more and more popular all around. According to a report by the International Data Corporation (IDC), global spending on cybersecurity solutions reached USD 219 billion in 2023. This reflects a 12% increase from the previous year. Thus, if you want to ensure your business continuity in today’s shaky conditions, keep reading this post. We will cover there the top five steps to be taken on your end.

Reasons to Have a Disaster Recovery Plan

Disasters may affect companies in different ways, resulting in a wide range of unpleasant situations. From an earthquake that disrupts physical infrastructure and worker safety to a cloud service outage that prevents access to critical data storage and customer services, having a solid disaster recovery plan ensures that organizations recover fast. Here are some of the key reasons for you to develop a disaster recovery plan:

• Ensuring business continuity — Business continuity and disaster recovery services help companies return to regular operations after an unanticipated incident. They can ensure data protection, provide a backup, and perform other key functions.
• Reducing costs — The latest Cost of Data Breach Report of IBM states that the average cost of a data breach in 2024 was USD 4.88 million. This is 10% more than during the previous three years. Enterprises that do not have disaster recovery procedures in place run the risk of incurring expenses and penalties that might much exceed the savings from not investing in the solution.
• Minimizing downtime — Modern businesses heavily rely on complicated technology solutions. Unplanned incidents that impair corporate operations may cost millions of dollars. Furthermore, the high-profile nature of hacks, prolonged outages, or human-error-related disruptions are not the best things to attract customers and investors.
• Maintaining compliance — Businesses in tightly regulated industries such as healthcare and personal finance risk steep fines and penalties for data breaches. Having a good disaster recovery strategy may decrease recovery times after an unforeseen event, which is crucial in industries where the amount of financial penalty is often linked to the length of the breach.

It’s crystal clear — modern enterprises must prioritize disaster recovery strategies as part of their overall risk management framework. This way, they can enhance their business resilience and continuity.

Steps to Develop a Solid Disaster Recovery Strategy

Disaster recovery planning starts with a thorough check of your core business operations. It requires business impact analysis (BIA) and risk assessment (RA). While each company is unique and has distinct needs, there are some general actions you should take for its efficient disaster recovery preparation.

Step #1 — Do Business Impact Analysis

Business impact analysis (BIA) is a thorough check of every risk your company faces, as well as their potential consequences. Strong BIA examines how risks may affect everyday operations, communication channels, worker safety, and other essential aspects of your business. When conducting BIA, here are some of the most important factors to consider:

• Revenue loss;
• Downtime length and cost;
• Reputational repair costs (public relations);
• Loss of customer or investor confidence (short- and long-term);
• And any penalties you may face as a result of compliance violations caused by an interruption.

Step #2 — Do Risk Assessment

Threats can vary greatly based on the industry and business type you own. This assessment should evaluate vulnerabilities in your systems, including outdated hardware and software. In the end, you are to determine the likelihood and impact of each risk on your operations. Each possible risk should be assessed independently by taking into account two factors:

1. The chance of occurrence;
2. The potential effect on company operations.

There are two common approaches to this: qualitative risk analysis and quantitative risk assessment. The former is based on perceived danger, while the latter is conducted using verified facts.

Step #3 — Create an Asset Inventory

A solid disaster recovery strategy requires having a full overview of the assets your company owns. This includes gear, software, IT infrastructure, data, and anything else that is necessary for your core business operations. Here are three commonly used labels to categorize your assets:

• Crucial — Assets should only be labeled as crucial if they are essential for routine company operations.
• Important — Assign this label to assets that your company employs at least once per day and that, if interrupted, would have an effect on business operations (but not completely shut down).
• Unimportant — These are the assets that your company rarely uses and are not required for typical business operations.

Step #4 — Define Roles and Assign Responsibilities

You should prepare a clear overview of roles and responsibilities. Otherwise, no one will know what to do in case of an incident. While exact roles vary widely depending on a company's size, industry, and type, any recovery plan should cover the following:

• An incident reporter — A person is in charge of interacting with stakeholders and necessary authorities when disruptive events occur. One should also keep contact information for all parties up to date.
• Disaster recovery plan manager — Your DRP manager ensures that disaster recovery team members complete their assigned responsibilities and that the approach you implemented operates well.
• Asset manager — When a disaster occurs, you should designate someone to secure and safeguard vital assets while also reporting on their status during the situation.

Step #5: Document and Test the Plan

To ensure that your disaster recovery plan is effective, you are to continually rehearse it and adjust it in response to any significant changes. For example, if your company buys additional assets after developing your DRP strategy, they must be included in your plan to ensure future protection. Testing and refining your disaster recovery approach may be divided into three basic steps:

1. Make a realistic simulation — When practicing your DRP, try to make a setting that is as close to the real situation your company will face as possible without putting anyone in danger.
2. Identify issues — Use the DRP testing process to find issues and inconsistencies in your plan, make things easier, and fix any problems you find with your backup methods.
3. Test your disaster recovery protocols — It's crucial to test how you will respond to an incident. At the same time, it's also important to test the processes you've established for recovering key systems after the incident is over. Test how you will restore lost data, restart networks, and go on with regular business operations.