Introduction
This white paper is intended to give its readers a framework with which to review their business networks against a baseline of ten fundamental and important elements of implementing a Disaster Recovery Plan. Some businesses may have Disaster Recovery Plans in place, and in that case this white paper provides a useful checkpoint, and hopefully validation.
It seems like many prescriptive lists boil down to “ten points,” and after some careful review I am presenting what I have seen to be the ten key steps to building and implementing a Disaster Recovery Plan for a medium business (and to some degree both a small business and enterprise) network. I would say that they represent ten “best practices” that should generally be applicable across the spectrum.
Once you have your plan, with sequenced activities and a realistic timeline, you are ready to begin. And I am confident that by following this process, you will see a genuine and substantive improvement in your organization’s disaster preparedness, and a subsequent reduction in business risk.
Since the majority of medium business networks are based on Microsoft technology, we’ll pay particular attention to Microsoft products here, but these points apply across the board.
Disaster Recovery versus Business Continuity Planning
Although these terms are often used interchangeably, Disaster Recovery Planning is distinct from Business Continuity Planning. The key distinction between these different, but related, activities would be:
o Business Continuity Planning is about defining the assets, threats and scenarios that can adversely impact your organization, and making decisions about how or to what degree to mitigate these risks. In other words, Business Continuity Planning is in most cases about preventing the Disaster Scenario from happening.
o Disaster Recovery Planning is about defining consistent, pre-planned actions that will react to various Disaster Scenarios. In other words, Disaster Recovery Planning is about reacting to the Disaster Scenario after it has happened.
Business Continuity Planning centers on the business as a whole, and business processes. Disaster Recovery Planning often starts in IT, not because that is the only place of focus but because it is the most obvious
This white paper is intended to give its readers a framework with which to review their business networks against a baseline of ten fundamental and important elements of implementing a Disaster Recovery Plan. Some businesses may have Disaster Recovery Plans in place, and in that case this white paper provides a useful checkpoint, and hopefully validation.
It seems like many prescriptive lists boil down to “ten points,” and after some careful review I am presenting what I have seen to be the ten key steps to building and implementing a Disaster Recovery Plan for a medium business (and to some degree both a small business and enterprise) network. I would say that they represent ten “best practices” that should generally be applicable across the spectrum.
Once you have your plan, with sequenced activities and a realistic timeline, you are ready to begin. And I am confident that by following this process, you will see a genuine and substantive improvement in your organization’s disaster preparedness, and a subsequent reduction in business risk.
Since the majority of medium business networks are based on Microsoft technology, we’ll pay particular attention to Microsoft products here, but these points apply across the board.
Disaster Recovery versus Business Continuity Planning
Although these terms are often used interchangeably, Disaster Recovery Planning is distinct from Business Continuity Planning. The key distinction between these different, but related, activities would be:
o Business Continuity Planning is about defining the assets, threats and scenarios that can adversely impact your organization, and making decisions about how or to what degree to mitigate these risks. In other words, Business Continuity Planning is in most cases about preventing the Disaster Scenario from happening.
o Disaster Recovery Planning is about defining consistent, pre-planned actions that will react to various Disaster Scenarios. In other words, Disaster Recovery Planning is about reacting to the Disaster Scenario after it has happened.
Business Continuity Planning centers on the business as a whole, and business processes. Disaster Recovery Planning often starts in IT, not because that is the only place of focus but because it is the most obvious
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