Disaster Recovery Plans and Testing is essential for any business.
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a formal documented policy and/or process created for an organisation containing detailed instructions on how to respond to unplanned incidents. This could be natural disasters, power outages, cyber-attacks, or any other disruptive events.
The purpose of the plan is to strategize ways to minimise the effects of a disaster should it occur so the organisation can continue to operate, or at the very least, resume key operational needs.
Disruptions to any business can vary in terms of the scale of their impact but will likely cause these most common outcomes:
- Lost revenue
- Brand damage
- Customer dissatisfaction
- Regulatory penalties
Additionally, the longer the disruption, the greater impact to your business/organisation as a whole and therefore longer-term damage to your business.
A clear and effective disaster recovery plan will limit the level of disruption and therefore enable a more rapid road to recovery.
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” – Benjamin Franklin.
Once you have a plan in place, the next steps are to test it, can ensure a process to test regularly.
Disaster Recovery Testing
Disaster recovery testing is important because it helps to ensure that an organisation can recover quickly and efficiently. By testing the disaster recovery plan on a regular basis, organisations can identify and fix any potential problems before they cause significant complications. For most organisations, the core focus for any plan is to protect their data – most importantly, your servers.
There are several benefits to regular disaster recovery testing:
- It helps to ensure that the plan is up-to-date and accurate.
- It identifies any gaps or weaknesses in the plan.
- It helps to train employees on how to use the plan.
- It provides confidence that the organisation can recover from a disaster.
- Your insurance provider may require it as part of your policy conditions.
How can Information Solutions help?
As your existing IT support partner, Information Solutions is well positioned to offer the most efficient and effective service to both support plan development and testing programmes.
Through our partnership, we have a full understanding of both your existing IT infrastructure and overall organisational structure. This allows us to appreciate the varying complexities and wider stakeholder considerations to be best equipped to support creation of a comprehensive plan.
Our server testing services will help ensure effective controlled testing of your disaster recovery plan. A comprehensive restoration back up will be securely stored at Information Solutions along with ensuring a verified back up is always stored correctly.
All testing procedures and reporting will be provided by our expert team to ensure you retain records which can be demonstrated to insurers as required. The testing reporting will also include any identified points for improvement and assistance to do so if necessary.
To discuss disaster recovery planning and testing services further including our exclusive packages for existing customers contact us today using the form below.