THE AUTHOR
Manoj Bonam
Chief Technology Officer
The increasingly essential security and DR your business needs
As we increasingly rely on technology for success and growth, the importance of security also increases. With more and more businesses migrating to the cloud, there is a consistent need for efficient cloud managed services. Along similar lines, an essential yet often neglected aspect among small and medium businesses is disaster recovery(DR). DR is an integral part of security planning that focuses on recovering the organization’s functioning from any attack, including cyberattack, system failures, among others. Establishing a firewall or increasing the efficiency of passwords is no longer sufficient. Web vulnerabilities, including SQL injection, can allow malicious activities to happen by bypassing a login mechanism, thus compromising on the safety of the organization.
Why DR is vital for SMB
While most large organizations invest in backups and contingencies, the assumption that SMBs do not require a robust recovery plan can affect the performance of the company. Assuming that it is easy to recover from a breach or outage has been one of the primary reasons for companies to delay investing in a disaster recovery plan. While some incidents are indeed minor and easily recoverable, a major attack like ransomware that could shut down your business could just as easily happen. Therefore, we believe that all companies irrespective of their size must have cloud managed services for IT security and disaster recovery plans.
What should SMB know before creating a DR plan
Any business is made of components that work in sync to ensure the smooth sailing of the corporate ship. While developing a DR plan, one must understand these components and arrange them in the order of priority to ensure all critical business needs are addressed. Here is a checklist of questions that planners should ask and understand before formulating a plan for recovery.
- What are the critical areas of business that can be severely affected because of an interruption?
- What is the financial worth of each process, and how can disruption affect revenue?
- How much can data be recovered or recreated manually during downtime?
- How long can the business continue without revenue repercussions during an attack?
- What is the level of dependency and capability of the IT infrastructure team in the company?
Best practices of the DR plan
Cloud based DR plan
One of the formidable ground rules for cloud based DR planning is its positioning in the company’s system. It is essential to consider the implementation of the DR plan services as much as planning for emergencies itself. Unless the plan is positioned for easy recovery and utilization at the time of disaster, the purpose of the plan will be lost. Hence, professionals highly recommend leveraging resources away from the primary data center or considering a cloud managed service platform like AZURE.
Individual recovery plan for different types of disasters
Since there are several components involved in your technology stack, DR planning must include and cover every aspect of data protection and safety. From host failure, data center failure, application failure, communication failure to more generic natural disasters and environmental disasters, all must be taken into account while formulating a recovery plan with the help of cloud service providers.
Detailed documentation of the plan
A good DR plan is not only well thought out, but also copiously documented. Depending on the complexity of the plan, SMBs can prepare DR plans up to 100 pages covering the end-to-end of bringing the company back on its feet. These plans should start with the basics of establishing the scope of each plan to reviewing and finalizing the plan with management’s approval.
DR plan testing
Every plan, no matter how simple or complex, must be thoroughly tested at the finalization stage. This testing is critical as it can help identify any unseen loopholes that were otherwise perfect on paper during preparation. With testing, the team can update or modify the plan to suit the needs. Also, a consistent DR plan audit is mandatory to make sure newer situations are included in the existing plans.
If any of this seems overwhelming to you, get in touch with our cloud service experts for more details.
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