By Casey Morgan, StorageCraft
You should revise your backup and disaster recovery plan every year. Here’s a quick guide to revising for 2013:
What worked, what didn’t?
For those who saw their plan in action, hopefully the plan went well. But now it’s time to figure out what you could have done better. After the emergency, were you able to:
- Contact employees?
- Easily recover computer systems?
- Get back on track quickly?
For the next time ask yourself:
- What do we need that we didn’t have?
- What weren’t we prepared for?
Those that didn’t experience disaster, it’s good to imagine how your plan would’ve fared against a calamity.
Talk to Employees
Whether you experienced disaster or not, talk to your employees. Make sure they know what is expected of them in an emergency, ask if they have questions, and if there’s anything they’d add to the plan. Every employee has a valuable perspective.
Growth
Your business can easily outgrow your backup and disaster recovery plan. Your revised plan needs to account for 2012 growth and anticipate 2013 growth. Focus on new employees and new equipment.
Overkill
You don’t want to spend company resources on over-preparation. Be prudent when determining what you realistically need and what might be considered overkill. If you downsized, your new plan reflects those changes as well—don’t pay for what you no longer need.
Share and Schedule Regular Tests
Share the new changes with your employees and schedule a regular test of your plan. It might be helpful to mimic a disaster scenario you might feasibly encounter. The more realistically you can look at potential scenarios, the better you can test and prepare for the real ones when they happen.
Disaster Plan First
It takes time to build a backup and disaster recovery plan and many businesses might see it as a secondary concern. You really never know when something will go wrong, but by taking care of your backup and disaster recovery plan first, you’ll know that in the event of misfortune your plan is already set.
