Avoid these 6 critical mistakes during disaster recovery

Disasters like fires and malware attacks can strike your business at any time. When they do, it’s crucial to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place to mitigate their impact on your business. Unfortunately, many businesses make critical mistakes that can significantly slow down the disaster recovery process. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at six of these blunders and how you can avoid them.

1. You don’t have a DR plan

If your business doesn’t have a DR plan, it will be difficult to recover from incidents. Your recovery teams won’t know what to do and will make last-minute assumptions, resulting in a longer and costlier recovery process.

By having a proper DR plan, you can better assess the scenarios that threaten your operations and how to combat them. Your plan provides specific recovery instructions so teams know what to do when disaster strikes. What’s more, it identifies technology solutions that facilitate the recovery process like cloud backups and provides directions on how they should be used.

2. The DR plan is outdated

Over time, the information in your DR plan may become outdated and key personnel may leave the company. You may also replace your IT systems and face newly emerged cyberthreats

For instance, if your DR plan didn’t include the threat of ransomware and such a malicious program infected your system, you may encounter issues recovering from the incident.

By regularly reviewing and updating your DR plan, you ensure that it’s always relevant and effective. Updated DR plans and briefings also guarantee your team is well versed in the latest disaster recovery procedures and know how to handle disruptive incidents.

3. You don’t test the plan

Some organizations make the mistake of creating a DR plan and then just setting it aside. By not testing the plan, no one knows if it will actually work and your team will not know what to do in the event of a disaster.

It’s vital to test your DR plan annually to determine the effectiveness of proposed procedures. One way to do this is by simulating recovery tests. For instance, you could stage a malware attack to see how well teams respond to it. You should also practice using technologies that support recovery procedures to see if they actually work as expected.

4. Your backups are stored in only one basket

Backups are a fundamental part of disaster recovery, as these ensure that you can recover your files and applications in case of data loss. However, storing all your backups in a single location is ill-advised because you can lose all your files if the backup facility becomes inaccessible or compromised.

Avoid this issue by implementing hybrid backups, which combine an on-site backup with replicated cloud backups. This way, if your on-site backup is destroyed or inaccessible, you can access another copy in another location.

5. Not getting everyone involved

It’s a big mistake to assume that only IT departments are responsible for disaster recovery. Instead, everyone on your team from senior management to rank-and-file employees should be aware of the security risks facing your business and play an active role in mitigating them.

Start by training your staff regularly in cybersecurity best practices. For example, teach them to be critical of every email or website they open and to refrain from downloading suspicious files. You can also simulate a cyberattack to test your employees’ reaction times. This will help you identify your teams’ strengths and areas for improvement to prepare your business for future cyberattacks. 

6. Not having a disaster recovery partner

Choosing the right disaster recovery partner can spell the difference between success and failure when recovering from disruptive events. Without one, your business will have to take responsibility for data restoration, systems replacement, and other critical processes that are beyond your expertise. And that’s all too much to take on alone 

Fortunately, reliable managed IT services providers like NetWize have extensive knowledge of disaster recovery. We can provide you with 24/7 technical support during disasters and help restore your operations quickly. Give us a call today.