Disaster Preparedness Plan: Are You Ready?

IT disaster recovery planning can be a big undertaking, with many scenarios to analyze and options to consider. Making sure that your business can get up and running as fast as possible after disaster strikes is key.

To begin, define what is important to keep the business running – for example: email and application access, database back-up, computer equipment – and the “recovery time objective” or how quickly the company needs to be up and running post-disaster. Other key plan components to consider are determining who within the organization declares the disaster, how employees are informed that a disaster has occurred, and the method of communication with customers to reassure them that the company can still service their needs. Here are seven basic but important steps to take: