Disaster Recovery in a Time of Escalating Danger

by Dave Moorman

The recent devastation wrought by "Superstorm Sandy" has reminded us all that no one is invulnerable to disaster. New York City saw an unprecedented (nearly 14-foot) storm surge, and businesses from North Carolina to Connecticut found themselves with sand and water pushed into their buildings—and power to their businesses disrupted.

It doesn't take a disaster of this magnitude to suspend business operations, and groups such as the Institute for Business   Safety (IBHS; ibhs.org) are making news daily with pronouncements about the detrimental impact of even minor disasters. So great is the concern that the federal government, working through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has expanded considerable effort (and tax dollars) developing powerful tutorials and tools to help companies engineer disaster recovery and business resiliency plans.

Yet, even though most firms have some form of business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan in place, statistics show the majority aren't sure how to implement it and/or don’t run test scenarios. A majority also have not taken advantage of the benefits that cloud computing and virtualization offer for BC/DR.

A complete BC/DR plan incorporates many elements, starting with a business impact analysis and followed by policy/goal statements, recovery strategies, and development of not only a BC/DR plan, but also a program for maintaining and testing the plan on a regular basis. (The FEMA tutorials mentioned above are an excellent start along this journey. The IBHS has some great templates as well.)

As FEMA points out and DynaSis has long maintained, an IT recovery plan and program is an integral component of any business continuity and disaster recovery plan (BC/DR). Although it may take months, or even years, for businesses to develop an enterprise-wide BC/DR plan that addresses operations at every level, BC/DR programs for the technology side have become easier, more affordable and more self-sustaining than ever before.

Cloud-connected backup hardware, preloaded with management, testing and recovery software, makes it effortless for companies to protect their technology assets and access them on-premise or remotely. For many firms, data archives are the single most important business asset—and the foundation of the BC/DR plan.

If you’d like to learn more about the newest technologies in data backup and recovery, as well as end-to-end programs that can have you and your employees and colleagues up and running in minutes, call DynaSis for a no-obligation, no-pressure consultation.