How to Create an Effective IT Backup and Recovery Plan

In the past, a good IT backup and recovery plan was mostly oriented towards mitigating preventable mistakes. Employee negligence or improper training were the root cause of missing files, deleted records, and even large-scale data disasters.

Things are different today. The development of a global cybercrime industry and the proliferation of ransomware has created an environment where disaster recovery solutions need to provide for new contingencies on a regular basis as organizations continually update their solutions to meet new threats.

As cybercrime blossoms into a full-scale multi-trillion dollar industry, the need for organizations to develop robust data backup and disaster recovery strategies becomes increasingly urgent. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and cybercriminals are always looking for that link.

What’s a Good IT Backup and Recovery Plan?

A successful IT backup and recovery plan has to take every aspect of business operation into account. It must offer disaster recovery solutions for multiple attack vectors, employee negligence, and other potential issues with a clear recovery time objective.

When a set of disaster recovery plans can successfully resolve multiple contingencies and deliver results even in worst-case scenarios, they form a comprehensive business continuity plan together. This should be the goal of any organization doing business in today’s networking landscape.

The best business continuity plans share a few attributes that executives and office managers will want to carefully plan around. By framing the business continuity plan around these terms, executives can ensure their IT backup plan is comprehensive enough to cope with today’s most determined cybercriminals.

A Comprehensive Cloud Backup Strategy

An organization that moves its infrastructure to the cloud can automatically enjoy many of the benefits of a disaster recovery plan. Cloud computing makes disaster recovery significantly easier to accomplish since there is no need to accommodate particular on-site equipment or data.

But organizations need to plan ahead in order for these solutions to be useful when disaster strikes. a cloud backup strategy needs to incorporate data redundancy, account replication, and regular testing in order to protect user and employee data during a cyberattack or natural disaster. It needs to incorporate sophisticated firewalls, real-time asset tracking, and event logging.

Redundant Support Infrastructure

Because business continuity plans need to be able to operate even when essential systems are compromised, they need redundant infrastructure. This means that an organization can reasonably expect to have its systems running even if a major portion of its servers are rendered inoperable, or if an office building loses power, or both.

But it also means that executives need to plan for unexpected contingencies like bandwidth needs. If an entire company runs its business processes off a cloud-based business continuity system, it may find out that it does not have enough bandwidth to cover its needs, slowing production to a standstill. Redundant, scalable support infrastructure is key to preventing this situation from occurring.

Clear Backup and Recovery Plan Objectives

The most important parameter of a disaster recovery plan is the recovery time objective. It establishes the amount of time that the business continuity system needs to restore in order to avoid unacceptable damage. Think of it as the “framerate” of each “snapshot” the business continuity plan takes of the entire business system – managed network vendors typically measure this in minutes.

Another important term is the recovery point objective. This term refers to the service level within which the plan can restore a particular business process. It describes the amount of data you can reasonably expect to lose without suffering too much damage. It is unique for every organization.

Independent Action Plans

In order for a business continuity plan to work, employees must be able to execute it independently. This requires independent action plans that define what key employees need to do when faced with a system emergency while keeping in mind that key systems may not work.

One of the major problems that businesses face when putting their disaster recovery solutions to the test is that they rely too heavily on communication. If an organization’s communications network is down, employees cannot ask managers to ask directors to ask executives what to do. Each department needs to have its own action plan that it can carry out even when cut off from the rest of the company.

Managed Network Services for Your Business

For organizations using in-house networking solutions, creating an effective IT backup and recovery plan is difficult and expensive. Kelley Create offers a full range of networking and wireless services to allow organizations of all sizes to develop a best-in-class IT backup and recovery plan that fits their unique needs.

Would your organization survive a data disaster? If you don’t have a robust IT backup and recovery plan in place, have one of our expert technicians implement one for you!