A New Reality for Disaster Recovery Plans
Every responsible organization has its own disaster recovery plan in place. But we doubt anyone had the foresight to plan for a pandemic to shut down the worldwide economy for the foreseeable future. Well, hindsight is 20/20. So if your business finds itself with some downtime while the world recovers from the coronavirus, take the opportunity to review your disaster recovery plan.
In previous blogs, we discussed the physical assets of an organization that might be affected by a natural disaster, such as a computer room environment and hardware. In the event of a hurricane or tornado, your organization could continue operating if you had backups of these assets at multiple locations of your business if one facility was down for any period of time. But how do you plan for a virus that is forcing the facility not deemed an “essential” business?
Here are a few aspects of your business that you’re most likely utilizing right now that should become mainstays in your disaster recovery plan moving forward:
- Plan for a remote workforce — Whether you had no work-from-home options in place before the virus took hold or you had a formalized telecommuting policy for your employees, you’re now seeing the pros and cons of having your staff do their jobs from the comfort of their own homes. You probably had to make some adjustments to your IT infrastructure to accommodate this new reality, so be sure to take notes on what’s working and what isn’t while you’re forced to experiment with telecommuting.
- Connectivity to a service provider — A third-party IT consultant could provide plenty of value before the safer-at-home mandates, and now they’re invaluable. Give them the opportunity to ensure your remote workforce is working securely and your technology makes a seamless transition.
- Data and restoration — On-premises servers require someone to brave the risks associated with leaving their home during the safer-at-home recommendation to make sure hardware is functioning. That isn’t required with cloud storage, though. Whether you have no cloud storage in your operations, or you haven’t made the transition to cloud only, it’s time to consider relying on the cloud for more of your storage.
Don’t feel bad if your business continuity plan doesn’t account for the effects of the coronavirus – this isn’t something predictable like hurricane season in the Gulf Coast or snowstorms in winter. But be sure you document your lessons as part of a new IT disaster recovery plan to add to your overall business continuity plan.
2W Tech is a technology service provider who has IT Consultants on staff that specialize in security solutions. Give us a call today for help with your disaster recovery plan.
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