What would happen if your company’s server failed tomorrow?
What if ransomware suddenly encrypted your files? What if a major storm caused a prolonged power outage? Or, what if your internet connection went down for an entire day and your employees could no longer access the cloud applications they depend on?
For many businesses, the answer isn’t always clear. In fact, when an unexpected technology failure occurs, uncertainty can quickly turn into frustration, lost productivity, and financial consequences. Moreover, because so many organizations now depend on technology for everyday operations, even a relatively short interruption can create significant challenges.
Fortunately, a technology failure doesn’t have to become a business disaster. With a well-designed disaster recovery plan, your organization can prepare for unexpected events and, more importantly, establish a clear path toward restoring systems and getting operations back online.
At Infinity Technologies, we help businesses evaluate their technology environments, strengthen their backup strategies, and develop practical approaches to business continuity and disaster recovery. As a result, businesses can be better prepared to respond when technology problems occur.
What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A disaster recovery plan is a documented strategy for restoring a company’s technology, data, applications, and critical business operations after a disruptive event. Although the word “disaster” may bring to mind hurricanes, floods, fires, or other natural events, a business can experience a technology disaster in many different ways. In other words, disaster recovery isn’t limited to preparing for natural disasters.
For example, an organization could face an emergency because of:
- Ransomware
- Hardware failure
- Cybersecurity attacks
- Accidental data deletion
- Power outages
- Internet outages
- Server failure
- Software problems
- Equipment failure
- Employee mistakes
- Fire or flooding
- Cloud service disruptions
- Physical theft
Furthermore, these events don’t always occur independently. A power outage, for instance, could lead to network problems, while a cybersecurity incident could affect servers, workstations, cloud applications, and backups at the same time.
For this reason, disaster recovery should be viewed as an important part of an organization’s overall IT strategy rather than something that is only considered after a major emergency.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t simply to have a backup. Instead, the goal is to understand how your business will recover when something goes wrong.
Why Every Business Needs Disaster Recovery
Technology plays an essential role in nearly every modern business. Employees rely on computers, email, cloud applications, file servers, business phones, databases, websites, payment systems, and countless other technologies throughout the workday.
Consequently, when one of these systems becomes unavailable, productivity can come to a sudden stop. Even a brief outage can prevent employees from completing important tasks, communicating with customers, or accessing information they need.
For instance, imagine that a business suddenly loses access to its primary server. As a result, employees may immediately lose access to customer information, accounting systems, shared files, business applications, databases, company documents, and other internal resources.
Without a recovery plan, employees may then spend valuable time trying to determine what happened, who should respond, and what needs to be done first. Meanwhile, customers may experience delays and employees may be unable to perform their normal responsibilities.
With a disaster recovery plan already in place, however, your organization has a defined process to follow. Rather than trying to create a solution in the middle of a crisis, your team can focus on executing the recovery strategy.
Therefore, disaster recovery isn’t simply about preparing for the worst. It is about giving your organization a structured way to respond when the unexpected occurs.
Step 1: Identify Your Critical Systems
Before developing a recovery strategy, you first need to understand what your business depends on every day.
Start by creating an inventory of the technology systems your employees need to perform their jobs. Depending on your organization, this could include:
- Servers
- Workstations
- Microsoft 365
- Customer databases
- Accounting software
- File storage
- Business applications
- VoIP phone systems
- Internet connectivity
- Security systems
- Cloud applications
- Websites
- Manufacturing systems
- Point-of-sale systems
Once you have identified these systems, consider what would happen if each one suddenly became unavailable.
For example, losing access to email may slow communication, while losing access to a customer database could prevent employees from serving customers altogether. Similarly, losing an accounting system may interfere with billing, payroll, or financial reporting.
At the same time, not every system will have the same level of importance. Your accounting system may be essential to daily operations, while a computer used primarily for presentations may be less critical.
By making this distinction, you can prioritize which systems need to be restored first. Consequently, your recovery efforts can focus on the technologies that have the greatest effect on your business.
Step 2: Determine How Long You Can Be Without Each System
Once you’ve identified your critical systems, the next question is how long your organization can realistically operate without them.
This is where businesses should begin thinking about their Recovery Time Objective, or RTO.
An RTO represents the amount of time your organization can tolerate a system being unavailable before the disruption becomes unacceptable. In other words, it helps establish how quickly a particular system needs to be restored.
For example:
| System | Example RTO |
|---|---|
| 4 hours | |
| Accounting | 8 hours |
| Customer database | 2 hours |
| File server | 4 hours |
| Website | 8 hours |
| Non-critical application | 24 hours |
Of course, these timeframes will vary depending on your organization and industry.
For instance, a medical organization, manufacturer, financial company, municipality, or emergency services organization may have significantly different recovery requirements than a small professional office. Likewise, even two businesses in the same industry may have completely different priorities. One company might be able to operate for several hours without a particular application, whereas another could experience serious financial consequences within minutes. Therefore, it’s important to establish these requirements before an emergency occurs. Once a crisis begins, it may be too late to determine which systems should take priority.
Step 3: Determine How Much Data You Can Afford to Lose
Recovery time isn’t the only consideration. You should also determine how much data your organization could realistically afford to lose.
This is known as your Recovery Point Objective, or RPO.
Essentially, an RPO helps determine how frequently your data needs to be backed up. The more important the information is, the more frequently it may need to be protected.
For example, suppose your accounting system is backed up once every 24 hours. If the server fails just before the next scheduled backup, your organization could potentially lose an entire day’s worth of information.
For some businesses, that may be manageable. However, for others, losing even an hour of data could create significant financial or operational problems.
As a result, your RPO should reflect the importance of the information involved and the potential consequences of losing it.
Furthermore, RPO and RTO should work together. While RTO focuses on how quickly you need to restore a system, RPO focuses on how much recent data you can afford to lose.
Step 4: Build a Reliable Backup Strategy
Backups are one of the most important components of disaster recovery. However, simply having a backup does not automatically mean your business is protected.
Instead, you should understand exactly how your backup strategy works and whether it can actually support your recovery requirements.
Ask questions such as:
- What information is being backed up?
- How frequently is it backed up?
- Where are backups stored?
- Are backups encrypted?
- Who can access them?
- Are backups protected from ransomware?
- How long are backups retained?
- Are backup jobs monitored?
- When was the last successful backup?
- Has a restore actually been tested?
Most importantly, don’t assume your backup works simply because your backup software reports that the job completed successfully.
After all, the purpose of a backup is not merely to create another copy of information. The real purpose is to provide a reliable way to restore that information when it is needed.
Therefore, a successful recovery test provides much greater confidence than a green status indicator. By testing your backups, you can identify problems before they become part of a real emergency.
Step 5: Protect Backups From Ransomware
Modern disaster recovery planning must also account for cybersecurity threats.
For example, if ransomware compromises your network, attackers may attempt to encrypt or delete backups along with your production data. As a result, a business could discover that its recovery options have been compromised at the same time as its primary systems.
Because of this, organizations should consider additional safeguards designed to protect their backup environment.
These may include:
- Offline backups
- Immutable backups
- Isolated backup environments
- Restricted administrative access
- Multi-factor authentication
- Encryption
- Backup monitoring
- Multiple backup copies
In addition, access to backup systems should be carefully controlled. If too many users or systems can modify backups, a compromised account could potentially create additional problems.
Ultimately, the objective is to make sure that a cybersecurity incident affecting your primary environment doesn’t automatically eliminate your ability to recover.
Step 6: Create a Communication Plan
During a major technology outage, communication becomes extremely important.
While your IT team may be focused on restoring systems, employees, management, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders may also need information. Consequently, communication should be considered an important component of disaster recovery rather than an afterthought.
For that reason, your disaster recovery plan should identify:
- Who is responsible for declaring an incident?
- Who contacts IT?
- Who contacts management?
- Who communicates with employees?
- Who communicates with customers?
- Who contacts vendors?
- Who contacts insurance providers?
- Who handles public communications?
In addition, important contact information should remain accessible even when your primary IT systems are unavailable.
For example, if your emergency contact list exists only inside the system that has failed, it won’t be particularly useful during a crisis.
Therefore, keep essential contact information available through an appropriate backup method so your team can still reach the people it needs.
Step 7: Establish Roles and Responsibilities
A successful disaster recovery plan should clearly define who is responsible for what.
Everyone doesn’t need to be responsible for everything. Instead, assign specific responsibilities to the people who are best positioned to handle them.
For example:
Business Leadership
Business leaders make major operational decisions and approve business continuity actions. In addition, they may determine which business functions should receive priority during a prolonged outage.
IT Team or IT Provider
The IT team or IT provider investigates the technology failure, identifies the cause, and begins the appropriate recovery procedures. Depending on the situation, they may also coordinate with vendors and technology providers.
Department Managers
Department managers identify critical departmental systems, communicate with their teams, and help coordinate employees during the recovery process.
Employees
Employees follow emergency procedures, protect company information, and report technology issues appropriately. Furthermore, employees should know who to contact when they encounter a potential security or technology problem.
Vendors
Technology vendors may provide support for critical hardware, software, cloud services, internet connectivity, communications systems, or other essential services.
By establishing these responsibilities in advance, your organization can reduce confusion and respond more efficiently when time matters. More importantly, everyone can understand their role before an emergency occurs rather than trying to figure it out during one.
Step 8: Plan for Internet and Communication Failures
Disaster recovery isn’t limited to servers and files.
Today, businesses also depend heavily on internet connectivity and communication systems. Consequently, an internet outage or phone system failure can be just as disruptive as a server problem.
Consider what would happen if your primary internet connection suddenly failed.
Could employees continue working?
Could customers reach your business?
Could employees make and receive phone calls?
Could your company access cloud applications?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, your organization may need to consider additional continuity measures.
For organizations that rely heavily on cloud technology, internet redundancy and backup connectivity may be worth considering. For example, a secondary connection can provide an alternative path to essential cloud services if the primary connection becomes unavailable.
Likewise, your business communications strategy should account for phone system failures and other disruptions that could prevent employees from communicating with customers or one another.
Step 9: Consider Cloud Applications
Moving technology to the cloud can provide greater accessibility and flexibility. Nevertheless, cloud services don’t eliminate the need for disaster recovery planning.
In fact, as businesses become increasingly dependent on cloud applications, understanding cloud recovery responsibilities becomes even more important.
Microsoft 365 and other cloud applications can become critical components of your daily operations. Therefore, businesses should consider:
- Account security
- Data protection
- Access controls
- User permissions
- Backup requirements
- Service interruptions
- Administrator accounts
- Multi-factor authentication
- Recovery procedures
It’s also important to understand which responsibilities belong to the cloud provider and which remain with your organization.
For example, while a cloud provider may maintain the underlying infrastructure, your organization may still be responsible for account security, permissions, data protection, and other aspects of your technology environment.
Therefore, simply storing information in the cloud doesn’t mean every aspect of your data protection and recovery strategy is automatically handled.
Step 10: Document Your Recovery Procedures
A disaster recovery plan shouldn’t exist only in someone’s head.
Instead, the steps required to restore critical systems should be documented clearly so the appropriate people can follow them during an emergency.
Your documentation may include:
- Network diagrams
- Server information
- Hardware inventories
- Software information
- Administrator contacts
- Vendor contacts
- Backup procedures
- Recovery procedures
- Cloud service information
- Firewall information
- Network configurations
- Application dependencies
- Emergency contacts
Furthermore, documentation should be stored securely in a location that remains accessible if your primary network becomes unavailable.
Accurate documentation can save valuable time when technicians and business leaders are trying to restore operations under pressure. In addition, it can help prevent unnecessary delays caused by missing information.
For this reason, documentation should be treated as an active part of your disaster recovery strategy rather than a document that is created once and forgotten.
Step 11: Test Your Disaster Recovery Plan
A disaster recovery plan that has never been tested is an assumption rather than a proven recovery strategy.
Testing gives your organization an opportunity to identify problems before an actual emergency exposes them.
For example, you may discover that a backup exists but cannot be restored. Similarly, you may find that an administrator account is no longer active or that employees aren’t sure who is responsible for a particular task.
You could also discover that restoring one system depends on another system that wasn’t included in the original recovery plan.
Although these discoveries may be inconvenient during a test, they can be extremely valuable.
In fact, identifying a weakness during a controlled test gives your organization an opportunity to correct it before a real emergency occurs.
Therefore, regular testing allows your organization to find weaknesses before a real disaster does.
Step 12: Review the Plan Regularly
Your technology environment is constantly changing.
Businesses add employees, servers, applications, cloud services, locations, network equipment, security systems, and vendors. As a result, the technology environment you have today may look very different from the one you had a year or two ago.
Because of this, your disaster recovery strategy needs to evolve as well.
A plan that was accurate two years ago may no longer reflect your current technology environment. For example, your business may have replaced a server, moved an application to the cloud, added a new location, or changed internet providers.
Therefore, review your disaster recovery plan regularly and update it whenever significant technology or organizational changes occur.
By keeping the plan current, you can ensure that the people, systems, vendors, and recovery procedures listed in the document still match your actual business environment.
Disaster Recovery Checklist
Take a moment to consider the following questions:
- Do we know which systems are critical to our business?
- Do we know how long we can operate without them?
- Do we know how much data we can afford to lose?
- Are our critical systems backed up?
- Are our backups monitored?
- Have we successfully tested a restore?
- Are our backups protected from ransomware?
- Do we have a documented disaster recovery plan?
- Do employees know what to do during an outage?
- Do we have emergency contact information?
- Do we have a plan for internet outages?
- Do we have a plan for communication system failures?
- Have we tested our disaster recovery plan recently?
If you answered “No” or “I’m not sure” to several of these questions, your organization may have an opportunity to strengthen its disaster recovery strategy.
More importantly, these questions can help reveal areas that may otherwise go unnoticed until an actual outage occurs.
Disaster Recovery vs. Backup: What’s the Difference?
The terms backup and disaster recovery are sometimes used interchangeably. However, they describe two different parts of an organization’s recovery strategy.
A backup is the process of creating copies of your data.
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, is the broader process of restoring technology and business operations after a disruptive event.
Consequently, a business can have excellent backups and still have a weak disaster recovery strategy.
For example, you may have a backup of your server, but what happens if you don’t have a documented process for rebuilding the server, restoring applications, configuring the network, or getting employees back to work?
In that situation, the backup itself may be perfectly functional, yet the business could still experience significant downtime.
That is why an effective disaster recovery strategy considers the entire recovery process rather than focusing exclusively on data backups.
Don’t Wait Until Disaster Strikes
The worst time to develop a disaster recovery plan is after your systems have already failed.
Instead, preparation gives your organization options.
By planning ahead, you can identify critical systems, establish recovery priorities, protect important data, assign responsibilities, and determine how your organization will respond when something goes wrong.
Furthermore, a properly designed strategy can help reduce downtime, protect important information, establish clear responsibilities, and provide a structured path toward restoring operations.
At Infinity Technologies, we work with businesses to evaluate their IT infrastructure, identify potential weaknesses, and develop technology strategies based on their operational requirements.
- Managed IT Services
- Backup & Disaster Recovery
- Cybersecurity
- Network Infrastructure
- Firewall Implementation
- Network Monitoring
- Business Continuity Planning
- Microsoft 365 Management
- Business Communications
- Structured Cabling
- Security Camera Systems
- Access Control
Is Your Business Prepared for an IT Disaster?
You don’t have to wait for a server failure, ransomware attack, or major outage to discover whether your organization can recover.
Instead, take the opportunity to evaluate your technology environment while your systems are operating normally. Infinity Technologies can help you evaluate your current backup and disaster recovery strategy, identify potential weaknesses, and determine where improvements may be appropriate.
Build Your Disaster Recovery Strategy Before You Need It
A disaster recovery plan is ultimately about preparation. Although no business can predict exactly when a technology disruption will occur, you can decide how prepared your organization will be when it does.
Serving businesses throughout Chicagoland, Illinois, and beyond.