If your office facilities burned to the ground, would your business survive?

Two of five businesses experiencing a disaster of this magnitude will be out of business within 5 years.  In spite of this, only about a third of small businesses have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan (DRP).  Most small businesses would not consider operating without insurance on their buildings, equipment and automobiles.  Some even carry business interruption insurance.  However, in the event of a disaster, no amount of insurance alone will make the business whole.  A DRP is the blueprint for restoring the business to its pre-disaster state.  Insurance proceeds will fund the implementation of the DRP.  

Initially, disaster recovery planning forces business management to answer two key questions:

• How much data can we afford to lose?
• How long can we be down?

In recovery planning parlance, the answers to these questions determine the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO).  In financial terms, the tightness of the RPO and RTO largly determine how much money you need to invest now in order to successfully meet the objectives of the DRP in the event of a disaster.  For example, if your RPO is one week, you can meet your objective by sending backup media offsite every Friday.  If your RPO is 3 hours, you'll need to implement remote backup technology today in order to have any hope of meeting your goal.

When you have definitively answered these two questions you can begin to build a Disaster Recovery Plan.

While data is probably the most valuable asset you'll need to recover, it is still only one piece of the puzzle.  You'll need to plan for replacement of equipment and for facilities to house the equipment and your staff.  Or maybe your staff will work from home?  As part of your planning process, consider having key employees work at home for several consecutive days.  Have them document their "pain points".  At the same time, have those that remain at the office document the assistance they were required to provide to those working from home.  Taken together, these reports will help identify issues that need to be addressed in case disaster strikes.

Once you have a plan you need to test it. And upate it. And test it. And test it again.  Things change, your equipment, your staff, your business.  Your disaster recovery plan must, at all times, reflect the current state of your organization.