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PLANNING FOR BUSINESS CONTINUITY - DISASTER RECOVERY

3 Simple Steps to minimise the Risk of Data Loss
With computers being used extensively in business today the amount of data being created and stored electronically continues to grow at a rapid rate. The growing reliance on electronic storage means that businesses are at risk of data loss due to:

• Computer Viruses
  
• Hardware/Software failure
  
• Network or Power Failure
  
• Human Error or Theft
  
• Natural Disasters eg Flood, Fire

Only two things are worse than seeing an entire company's data - their lifeblood - being destroyed in something like a hard drive crash; the first is not having a backup of that data, and the second is having a backup that can't be restored. To a growing business this type of loss can be crippling. There are however some simple steps you can take to minimise your risk.

What is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster Recovery put simply is having a plan in place to deal with the loss of data (files, databases, applications, operating systems) caused by an unplanned event such as hard drive failure or even fire or theft.

Three Simple Steps to Ensuring Your Electronic Assets are Protected

STEP 1. Create a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
The objective of any backup and disaster recovery planning should be to:

• Minimise loss of time, money and intellectual property
  
• Ensure a safe recovery
  
• Ensure Business continuity during the disaster

The basis of any plan is to ensure that you have a backup of all your important data. Most mission critical applications rely on databases that store information core to business operations.

One of the first steps in creating a plan is complete a Data Audit to determine what important data you have and where it resides. Once you have completed a Data Audit you need to consider what degree of data loss and how much downtime you can afford in the event of a disaster without irreparably damaging your business. Is it 10 mins or 48 hours? How long could you afford to be without your server in the event of a hardware failure? 

Determining acceptable data availability requirements will help guide appropriate backup and recovery solutions. 

STEP 2. Design and Implement a Solution
Once you have determined your data availability requirements you can begin to design an appropriate disaster recovery solution. You can either do this yourself or talk to a specialist who is experienced at recommending appropriate solutions. Using experienced consultants to assist with your Disaster Recovery Plan can:

• Minimise the complexity of disaster recovery procedures
  
• Reduce the technical cost of hardware and software
  
• Increase the effectiveness of the plan
  
• Accelerate Implementation

Consultants should be able to help you with planning right through to implementation and testing. Disaster Recovery solutions can range from very basic to the very sophisticated. As a minimum a copy of all data should be kept offsite for recovery purposes. This protects your business in the event of any disaster, including one that halts operations.

To protect against minor recovery issues you should also keep a copy of your latest data onsite so it is available quickly.

STEP 3. Supporting Policies and Procedures
It is important that your backup and recovery plan include supporting business processes and policies.

Why? Here are a few examples:

• The value of investing in a centralised server based backup solution is diminished if staff members have a habit of saving important business documents on their local drive, or worse on a personal computer rather than on business network drives.
  
• If your plan includes backup tapes being taken offsite each day then someone must have the responsibility for ensuring that this happens. 
  
• If a manual backup solution, like burning data to a CD is chosen then it must become someone’s responsibility to ensure that a regular backup is completed. All to often manual systems fail not because the solution doesn’t work but because the process of completing the backup can be time consuming and a hassle.
  
• If you plan to verify the reliability of your backup by way of a test recovery then who will do this, how often and following what process. The worst way to verify that your backup is not working is when you are trying to recover data that has been lost.

In the event of any disaster it is important to be up and operational as quickly as possible so take some time soon to think about and create a backup and recovery plan to protect your valuable business data.

Source: Veritas Pty Ltd.

About the Author
Rob Yeldon is the Managing Director of Purruna Pty Ltd. If you would like assistance in creating a Backup and Recovery plan for your business, call (02) 8596 6000 or email support@purruna.com.au or go to www.purruna.com.au. Purruna specialises in providing a complete range of technology solutions for businesses to enable growth.

© COPYRIGHT
All articles are copyright. These articles may be used for publication in magazines and newsletters with prior permission from the author and Samperi Consulting Group Pty Ltd. Please contact Samperi Consulting Group Pty Ltd for further information at karina@samperi.com.au.

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