IT Disaster Recovery Planning: What You Should Know

Imagine this: You’re making a presentation at a seminar. The PowerPoint file you’re using is stored on one of your enterprise’s servers. Suddenly, the corporate network goes down, and with it, your presentation is lost. Such moments are not only embarrassing but also erode productivity. According to research by UC Irvine, it takes an employee an average of 23 minutes to regain their focus on work after an interruption. On a larger scale, such outages are hugely expensive. According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime in the enterprise is $5,600 per minute.

This is why you need a tailored and effective IT disaster recovery plan to substantially reduce wasted time and minimize financial losses, while helping your employees return to normal workplace operations as soon as possible.

But what should you include in your IT disaster recovery plan? What should be your primary objectives, and how should you formulate a disaster recovery strategy that serves its purpose of helping your organization recover quickly and effectively? These questions may be overwhelming—which is why we at Akitra have written this blog post to address them. This blog will arm you with the basic knowledge needed to create and implement a disaster recovery planning process efficiently.

Let’s get started!

What is Disaster Recovery?

In the event of an unforeseen major disruption, a corporation can recover the use of its IT infrastructure through a series of predetermined plans and procedures – this is known as disaster recovery. The origin of the outage may be due to operator error, such as a network device misconfiguration, malicious actions by cyberattackers, mechanical failures (e.g., burst water pipes or malfunctioning air conditioners), or natural calamities (e.g., fires or hurricanes).

Disaster recovery, a key component of business continuity, focuses on ensuring that vital technological services are available or swiftly restored. Strategies focus on restoring hardware, apps, and data quickly to minimize the total impact of a bad incident. Disaster recovery solutions can be utilized, for instance, to repair essential systems, provide real-time replication of critical data, and replace malfunctioning equipment. These strategies, whether implemented internally or through DRaaS, are critical for ensuring that a business can continue to operate in the event of an emergency or system failure.

Who Creates a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Creating a disaster recovery planning process should be a collaborative effort among key decision-makers within an organization. This should include the following:

Top-level or C-level executives
IT team leads
HR
Finance
Operations and Security heads
Vendor managers

Overall, these individuals will collectively be responsible for creating, implementing, testing, and maintaining the IT disaster recovery plan.

Objectives of a Disaster Recovery Plan

It’s critical to initially consider the goals you want the plan to achieve while creating the best IT disaster recovery plan for your company. The DR plan’s primary objective is to protect customers and the company from the adverse legal, financial, privacy, and security consequences of a catastrophe.

1. Reducing Risk: Limit the disaster’s impact size and reach. Perform detailed risk analysis and examine potential targets. Create the disaster recovery strategy to isolate mission-critical components and streamline the pipeline for risk mitigation and remediation.

2. Minimizing Interruptions: The success of a firm heavily depends on the availability of online services. Ensuring that systems quickly resume normal and optimal performance following downtime is a primary goal of a robust IT disaster recovery plan. Planning for disaster recovery should prioritize metrics such as Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR).

3. Cutting Down Financial Losses: Prioritize MTTR of IT assets based on the deemed business value. An ideal business continuity and disaster recovery framework prioritizes:

Systems with the highest downtime cost impact
Production services critical to the organization’s mission (banking, healthcare, e-commerce)
Services affecting revenue generation

4. Knowing Your Cybersecurity Posture: Cybersecurity is challenging and resource-intensive. You should:

Identify and protect critical IT resources.
Stay updated on security patches.
Patch zero-day vulnerabilities immediately.
Conduct disaster recovery testing in conjunction with penetration testing.

5. Securing Regulatory Compliance: Some industries (healthcare, finance, defense, infrastructure) mandate compliance programs that include a disaster recovery strategy. Beyond regulations, customers demand adherence to standards such as SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.

6. Preserving Trust and Reputation: Users expect data protection and quick restoration during disruptions. A robust IT disaster recovery plan helps maintain brand loyalty even in times of crisis.

Steps to Create a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

Here’s a disaster recovery planning template:

Establish Goals – Define objectives and priorities.
Establish Accountability – Assign roles for disaster recovery testing and execution to ensure effective coordination and execution.
Set Application Asset Priorities – Focus on high-value and compliance-critical systems.
Specify Asset Details – Maintain an updated asset database.
Create a Backup Strategy – Define schedules based on data value and cost.
Specify a Recovery Plan – Include fire/natural disaster response, backup restoration, and team responsibilities.
Plan for Mobile and Hot Sites – Enable continuity during primary site rebuilds.
Create Restoration Guidelines – Restore systems to optimal states from backups.
Test Repeatedly – Conduct disaster recovery testing exercises regularly to ensure readiness.
Make Incremental Improvements – Continuously enhance your disaster recovery solutions to ensure optimal performance and reliability.

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