CyrusOne : IT Pros Must Prepare Disaster Recovery Plans

Those in charge of any company's IT infrastructure know full well that in many cases, data breaches and other such security concerns are inevitable. As such, it's important for businesses to not only have comprehensive plans in place for how to detect and react to these security threats on an ongoing basis, but also how to recover from them when and if they do happen.

A disaster recovery plan is vital for a business of any size dealing with the impact of a breach or other data security issue, but experts say it's vital to do more than simply set it and forget it, according to a report from the Data Center Journal. Not only do these plans have to be in place to ensure the best and quickest reactions to these kinds of issues, but companies should also practice dry run tests to make sure all involved in data security are on their toes.

Prepare the tests
In general, it's advised that these tests be scheduled on a regular basis, such as every quarter or once a year, so that there is no chance the issue falls by the wayside, the report said. In addition, it's important to have employee-related redundancies in place so that more than one person can check on various aspects of the system and effectively monitor how the recovery is progressing. Furthermore, every step of the process should be carefully recorded so inefficiencies that do crop up in a disaster recovery can be quickly and easily identified.

Because business continuity is so important at times like this, it's also vital that companies are able to consistently monitor their threats. However, some smaller firms might not have it in the budget to do this on their own, and for that reason, relying on certain data center services could go a long way toward boosting their ongoing data security as well.

Be precise in planning
When it comes to DR planning efforts, the more IT pros can do to spell out exactly what they expect of each employee involved in the process, the better off all involved will be, according to Government Technology. The good news is that as the planning gets more meticulous in this regard, companies and employees alike will be in a position to succeed when it comes to recovering from such an issue quickly and easily.

'Coming up with an efficient process where you're prioritizing your solutions, determining the actual net impact to the organization and also what's easily moveable into the cloud or not is key to establishing that clear strategy for cloud migration,' Dan Kasun, a top official at a major web services provider, said on a recent webcast, according to the site.

It's also important for all involved in DR planning and execution to know that in many cases, incidents are going to happen no matter how much prep is put in, the report said. With this in mind, executives and other workers can proceed with caution, rather than thinking, 'It will never happen to us.'