When it comes to property damaging disasters, statistics says that the possibility of getting robbed is greater than the occurrence of earthquakes, fires or floods. With reference to electronic equipment like computers, power failure or technical sabotage is more likely to happen than theft or any of the natural calamity disasters.
Any company that uses computers for its major operations should at all times have a workable business continuity planning disaster recovery setup. In order to understand better what this entails, the following basic definitions should be laid out.
* Backup – The system of creating several copies of company records and documents in order to avoid total loss of important corporate data during occurrence of disaster.
* Disaster Recovery – This covers the overall plan for the protection of your business documents and records which includes creating multiple backup data copies as well as the strategic storage of these backup data in various offsite locations. The data backup needs to be regularly tested and the plan to use them in recovering from disaster must be clearly laid out.
* Business Continuity – This lays out the specific plan on how the company could continue its business operation with negligible interruption caused by the disaster. The strategy for business resumption and continuity encompasses the disaster recovery plan. Other pertinent things like corporate insurance claims and relocation of business functions in case of destruction of the office building are also considered. It also includes a strategy of quick contact with company personnel, suppliers and clients as well as immediate restoration of the telecommunication system.
For the effective drafting of the plan for disaster recovery and business continuity, the following questions need to be answered by the management planning team:
* How much business income is lost per hour if and when your computers would shut down and you would not be able to access your data? The answer to this question includes factors like the cost you lose per employee if they are not working, the company revenue lost during the system down time and other company income related issues as well.
* What is the main objective of your data recovery process? This includes the estimated time required for lost data recreation and the implications if the majority of the lost data are not recovered at all. It entails comparing the amount of data loss with the length of time it takes to recover it.
The truly efficient business continuity planning disaster recovery setup must be able to address all corporate needs and so be proven effective in minimizing loss of company revenue during the recovery process after the disaster.