Disaster Recovery Plan – Protection from Cyber Attacks
So are you ready with your (DR) disaster recovery plan? Tornados, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, floods, and now cyber attacks. Any of these can occur at any time and leave a nasty mark on your business if you are not prepared for it. To keep yourself protected, it’s best to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan for your business, employees, and data assets.
A data recovery plan is a key component that any successful business should not ignore. Even if you believe your business is completely protected from all-natural and cyber disasters, it’s still prudent to put a plan in place to protect yourself from becoming a victim.
As far as data security is concerned, Business Insider reveals how every year more than 2500 new cases of cybercrimes are reported. this includes malware and ransomware, which pose a great threat to an organization’s data security. This leaves companies with no choice but to seek IT consultancy to strengthen their disaster recovery plan and data security measures.
If you do not have the resources, it is best to seek professional assistance to know exactly where you stand. The threats and vulnerabilities are always there – especially cyber attacks. However, the only way you can resolve this issue is by inspecting your system and designing a reliable disaster recovery plan. Which includes all the crucial components.
Components of a Disaster Recovery Plan Must Include:
The plan becomes easier to draft when you know what’s at risk and what you can do to protect it. With the right business processes and technologies, you can reduce the risk to a minimum if not mitigate them completely.
Take these steps and strengthen your disaster recovery plan right away.
Analyzing Potential Threats
To set up a reliable and workable plan, you first need to analyze the complete spectrum of possible reactions to the potential threats to your business. Your DR plan needs to be relevant to your business. It is also relevant to the type of threats it may be facing.
If multiple scenarios are going on, maybe you need a recovery plan for each. If there’s a risk of cyber attacks that could affect your networks and servers, you must have a transition plan to continue operations.
Of course, all scenarios rarely can occur at the same time. Therefore, it is best to anticipate potential threats and reactions. Then set out a plan that efficiently takes care of it. Unfortunately, data security threats are growing and becoming a more common scenario for businesses of all sizes and industries.
Keeping that in mind, you must have a disaster recovery plan for your data assets as well as for natural disruptors.
Business Impact Analysis
The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is carried out to determine the organization’s priorities regarding a disaster recovery plan. The idea is to pass every sensitive information system through the analysis process to evaluate the potential effect of the threats and events on business operations.
It is essential to complete BIA for all-important IT systems to identify system dependencies and priorities. The business impact analysis examines the availability, integrity, and confidentiality of the security objectives.
While you can use the BIA templates questionnaires and templates available online, there’s always the option to seek professional IT assistance for better results.
People
It is crucial to involve people in your DR plans as much as technology. The idea is to strike a perfect balance between your two major resources to set up the perfect disaster recovery plan. Don’t forget you are not only recovering servers and data here. An effective plan will involve context and processes from the overall organization.
How do you want the people in your organization to work towards disaster recovery? What behaviors do you expect from your community?
Also, identify critical employees and charge them with the responsibility of taking care of critical aspects of the disaster recovery plan. Be clear about who has to do what. It is best to decide beforehand about who will stand up from the organization to speak for the employees, clients, and victims in the event of a disaster.
Updates for Security
Once a disaster recovery plan is in place, it is important to make important changes to it to make it more relevant to the business and its operations with time. Update major software and focus the plan on a strong IT infrastructure.
A plan remains incomplete until it accounts for all the important applications, systems, and technologies in use. Also, update your plan as the company evolves. There are new offerings and tech in the market daily. If you change your system, make sure it reflects in your DR plan too.
Having a proactive approach to predictive algorithms and computer science to expand as per the need offers guaranteed solutions to the IT system’s availability, uptime, resilience, and overall function.
Priorities
This one’s simple and integral to the system. So you should know what’s most important. You cannot plan out a disaster recovery route for each and everything that’s a part of your business. You cannot spend resources on saving things that may not be worth saving.
Focus on data assets and sensitive information that are crucial for business operations. Grab only what your business depends on.
Practice Drills
Running a DR plan to ensure its efficiency is as crucial as having a plan itself. The plan should be regularly tested to make relevant changes as per the need. It is exactly how you prepare for emergency drills. You will run a DR plan only when it is needed. But you need to be sure that it’s ready at all times.
Conclusion
Most companies commit the mistake of waiting until the end to have a recovery plan. Don’t let your business become a victim of a disaster or cyber attacks to figure out solutions. Take a proactive approach and seek IT consultancy to have a system in place before it’s too late.