Disaster recovery is one of the more challenging aspects of business management today, as risks evolve quickly, vulnerabilities can arise with virtually no notice and forecasting major events is never an exact science. However, entrepreneurs have come a long way in the past five years or so when it comes to properly planning and executing disaster recovery strategies and policies, and this is largely the result of more shared knowledge in these matters.
Continuity and recovery success tends to be dictated by the skill and intelligence with which small business owners and managers handle their staff, processes and technologies, as well as the acute understanding of relevant best practices. Entrepreneurs who want to boost the resilience of their operations to disruptions and outages need to ensure that they are taking a wise approach to crafting strategies, provisioning the right technologies and preparing staff members proactively.
Wisdom in DR
First and foremost, when discussing what it takes to have a wise strategy, small business owners should always consider leveraging more advanced intelligence solutions to get the job done. Big data and similar analytical technologies can provide more accurate and timely insights regarding what needs to be done to protect the firm from disasters that range in relevance and likelihood. Knowledge always equates to power in this regard.
However, getting the basics right is certainly important, and this begins with following best practices and guidance from the professionals regarding what needs to be done to build a strong disaster recovery foundation. Computer Weekly interviewed Paul Kirvan of the Business Continuity Institute, who offered a range of advice to business owners, including more robust use of network virtualization and recovery solutions that protect vital infrastructure from loss and disruption.
Wisdom is vital when preparing businesses for disasters.Additionally, Kirvan told the source that testing is essentially the most important aspect of disaster recovery planning, as a failure to evaluate the strategies in real-life situations will leave the programs’ effectiveness up for debate. It might even be reasonable to say that testing – which is not always completed by all businesses – is in fact the wisest aspect of disaster recovery planning, as it will show exactly what changes need to be made to fortify operations again adverse events.
Other intelligent steps
Computerworld once explained that staff preparation is the primary feature of disaster recovery strategies that will tend to dictate the outcomes of procedures in the event of an outage. Boosting the organizational knowledge of what the plan entails, who has what responsibilities and why those components are in place will inherently yield stronger resilience to long-term outages and damages associated with natural and man-made disasters.
Furthermore, the news provider argued that companies should be especially interested in making smart changes to their plans following the testing procedures in place, as taking a half-hearted approach to these matters will rarely yield positive results. As always, the wisest decision for small business owners who are not fully confident in their firm’s abilities to build an adequate disaster recovery plan and execute accordingly will be to use the services of a managed solution provider.