Whether they are natural or man-made, disasters can strike at any moment. Recovering swiftly and effectively from such incidents is crucial to keep your business operations running smoothly. This is where disaster recovery testing plays a vital role.
Let’s dive into what constitutes a disaster, what disaster recovery testing involves, and how disaster recovery testing guarantees preparedness and minimizes downtime.
What constitutes a disaster?
A disaster is any event that disrupts the normal functions of a community or society, resulting in damage, loss, and disarray. These events can encompass natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, or they can be man-made or technological, such as cyberattacks, data breaches, or power outages. The impacts of these events on organizations can be so severe that they lead to data loss, financial setbacks, and reputational ruin.
In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of other less common types of disasters, including pandemics, supply chain disruptions, and social unrest, which also have a major impact on businesses and communities. Regardless of the nature of the disaster, organizations need to have a plan to immediately recover from it.
What does disaster recovery testing involve?
Integral to any disaster preparedness strategy is disaster recovery testing, or the process of simulating a disaster to test an organization’s ability to recover from it. Disaster recovery testing can involve examining a variety of components, including the disaster recovery plan itself, the IT infrastructure, your personnel, and your communication plan.
Crucial in disaster recovery testing is determining your company’s recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). RPO is the maximum amount of data that your company is willing to lose in the event of a disaster. On the other hand, RTO is the maximum amount of time that your company can afford to be down in the event of a disaster.
Knowing your RPO and RTO will help you develop a disaster recovery plan that meets your company’s specific needs. For example, if your company has a very low RPO, you will need to implement more frequent data backups and replication. If your company has a very low RTO, you will need to invest in more robust disaster recovery infrastructure and procedures.
To illustrate, an eCommerce company has a very low RPO and RTO because its website and systems need to be constantly online. This means that the company cannot afford to lose any data or be down for more than a few hours in the event of a disaster. The company therefore needs to implement a disaster recovery plan that includes:
- Hourly data backups to a multi-location data center
- A virtual machine replica of the company’s production environment stored in a secondary data center
- Automated procedures to fail over to the secondary data center in the event of a disaster
In this scenario, the eCommerce company can use data protection technologies such as Liberty Center One’s Virtual Disaster Recovery solutions to replicate its production data to its secondary data center. This way, if the company’s primary data center becomes unavailable or compromised, the company can quickly and easily switch to its secondary data center and resume operations with minimal downtime.
How disaster recovery testing helps ensure preparedness and minimize downtime
Disaster recovery testing can aid in enhancing preparedness and minimizing downtime in the event of a disaster by:
- Identifying and addressing weaknesses in your disaster recovery plan: Disaster recovery testing helps you identify any gaps or weaknesses in your strategy before a disaster strikes, allowing you to make necessary changes and boost your chances of a successful recovery.
- Testing your IT infrastructure: Disaster recovery testing can test your IT infrastructure and ensure that it can withstand a disaster and recover quickly with minimal downtime and operational disruptions.
- Assessing your personnel: Disaster recovery testing can assess your staff’s knowledge of disaster recovery procedures and their ability to respond to and recover from a disaster. The results of the assessment can then be used to fill gaps in their knowledge and make improvements to your disaster recovery strategy.
- Making sure your communication plan works: Disaster recovery testing can evaluate the effectiveness of your communication channels and procedures. This is vital to ensure that you can communicate with your staff, customers, and other stakeholders during a difficult period.
Companies should regularly conduct disaster recovery tests as part of their standard procedures. This way, when a cyberattack happens, they’ll be well prepared to swiftly isolate the threat, restore their systems from secure backups, and minimize the damage. By contrast, companies that neglect disaster recovery testing facing a similar cyberattack may respond in a chaotic and disorganized manner, which can lead to significant financial losses and a damaged reputation.
| Related reading: 5 Signs It’s Time To Update Your Disaster Recovery Plan |
Consult Liberty Center One’s experts about developing an effective disaster recovery strategy so you can withstand any eventuality. Talk to our experts today.