What Is Disaster Recovery? Key Components of an Effective Disaster Recovery Plan

What’s that one topic you could talk about for hours? Mine’s disaster recovery. A hacker recently took down a personal project I was working on. That painful loss drove me to learn more about disaster recovery. It also gave me a deep appreciation for it; a good disaster recovery plan could have saved me a lot of heartache.

Disaster recovery is the process of restoring systems, data, and operations after an unexpected disruption, such as a natural disaster.

Truth is, that loss wouldn’t have happened had I thought about disaster recovery well in advance. And that’s the whole point of this article. I’m hoping to help you avoid the same mistakes I made.

Have you ever heard of the phrase, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail?” That’s how I like to describe disaster recovery.

It’s all about making sure that your systems, data, and operations can recover quickly after a disaster — like a flood or ransomware attack. And the very first step to do this is to make a plan!

The plan should detail how to minimize downtime, reduce financial loss, and keep your business running with no issues even during a disaster.

You see, numbers don’t lie. More than 90% of businesses across the globe rely on some form of digital technology.

So when a disaster strikes, inconvenience is just a fraction of the troubles you’ll go through if you’re unprepared like I was. Among other problems, you’ll be staring at financial losses or even worse, the loss of consumer trust.

Disasters come wearing many different hats.

• Natural Disasters: We don’t really have control over natural disasters. I’m talking about fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and the like. Such disasters can physically damage servers, data centers, and other important infrastructure.
• Human-Made Disasters: These are cases of human error, negligence, or intentional harm. Think accidental data deletion, misconfigurations, or sabotage.
• Cyberattacks: Cyberattacks include malicious activities like ransomware, phishing attacks, or data breaches. They can cripple your systems and expose sensitive information. This is not a position you want to be in.

Usually, disaster recovery covers three important areas: data, infrastructure, and operations. And, in most cases, it follows that specific order.

When disaster knocks at your door, you want to make sure that everything’s backed up and recoverable. That’s the data I’m talking about.

Next, think about infrastructure. That’s where the data lives, travels, or just exists. I’m talking about servers, networks, cloud services, and even communication systems.

If it’s not damaged, you want to make sure you can restore the data. But if it is, you should be able to replace it.

Finally, your day-to-day operations shouldn’t halt because of the disaster.

Trust me on this; a disaster can cause an insane amount of damage to your system. Here’s some perspective.

The Financial Impact

As Jerry Maguire once said in the 1996 film, “Show me the money!” As with most things in life, disaster recovery has a pretty big financial impact.

System downtime, one of the first consequences of a disaster, can cost you a pretty penny. Every minute your systems are down can mean lost sales, delayed services, and mounting costs. Of course, some businesses can do just fine with a few minutes of downtime. Others simply can’t.

I’ll give you an example of Amazon.com, the world’s largest eCommerce website. Do you know how much it makes every minute? $896,000. Yep, you read that right! That’s almost $54 million an hour. Such a business would lose more money than I’ve earned in the past five years combined. In just one minute!

Don’t get me wrong, though: you don’t have to be Jeff Bezos to experience such a loss. As long as your business needs a strong online presence, even a short disruption can cause serious revenue loss.

Yet even if there aren’t immediate losses, disasters bring hidden costs. Data breaches or hardware failures, for example, will obviously need repairs. That means you’ll need parts and labor, and that’s expensive.

While at it, you’ll have to pray that your customers won’t file a data breach lawsuit against your business. Smaller businesses operating on tight margins simply can’t survive such legal action. We haven’t even considered long-term financial consequences, including the loss of investors’ confidence or the possibility of facing higher insurance premiums.

When it rains, it pours. And without a disaster recovery plan, your business will likely drown in a flood of misfortunes.

Legal and Compliance Considerations

Many industries have strict regulations regarding data protection and uptime. Laws like GDPR or HIPAA may seem like mere placeholders until when you’re on the receiving end for violating them.

For perspective, Meta, formerly Facebook, paid $1.3 billion in fines for GPDR violations in 2023. Fines like these aren’t just meant for the big tech companies down in Silicon Valley; any business that handles user’s private data can suffer the same fate.

If you have contracts with clients or partners, they may also include service-level agreements that guarantee specific recovery times. Failing to meet those SLAs can damage your business relationships and result in financial penalties — yikes!

Maintaining Business Operations and Customer Trust

Excuses are the last thing customers want to hear when disaster lands at your doorstep. They only care about results.

We’ve seen that you need a strong disaster recovery plan to minimize disruptions. Also, remember that building customer trust takes time, but losing it only takes a minute.

Personally, I’d pledge my loyalty to a company that recovers quickly from an incident. That shows they’re reliable and professional. On the other hand, repeated failures would drive me away and straight to competitors.

You’ve probably seen it in movies. Disaster strikes and everyone’s running around in panic. In the world of tech, you can’t afford to do that. You need a disaster recovery strategy. Here’s what I mean.

Risk Assessment and Analysis

First, you need to identify vulnerabilities. You can begin by analyzing your systems, infrastructure, and workflows to identify the weak spots that could fail during an incident.

You might find weak points that come from:

• old and outdated hardware
• weak cybersecurity measures
• reliance on a single data center
• a lack of regular backups
• subpar employee training on disaster management protocols

Once you know where the cracks are, you’ll be in a better position to address them before they become full-blown failures.

Next, you need to assess the potential impact of the weak points you’ve just identified. That’s because not all risks are equal. Some of these risks can be as small as minor inconveniences, but others could have the potential to shut you down.

Speaking of impact, you should look at it from a financial, operational, and reputational standpoint. Then, armed with this information, you can now prioritize resources and create targeted recovery plans.

Remember, risk assessment is a continuous process, not just a one-off thing. It’s something you’ll need to keep doing as technology evolves and your organization grows.

Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

It’s one thing to know what’s causing the disaster, and an entirely different thing to understand how to tackle it.

A good plan:

• outlines the goals of the recovery process
• assigns roles to team members
• identifies essential resources
• lays out step-by-step procedures for restoring systems and operations

Without these elements, even the best technology won’t save you in an emergency.

Documentation is yet another important aspect. It details every step, resource, and responsibility needed to implement your DR strategy.

Proper documentation limits the chances of confusion during high-pressure situations. You don’t want everyone running around in a panic. They should know their roles when seconds count.

Finally, there’s the communication part. Imagine attempting disaster recovery without communication. If your team doesn’t know where to find it or how to follow it, the plan itself would be as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

Clear communication channels, pre-written alerts, and defined escalation procedures are what you need. They make sure there’s a smooth response when disaster strikes.

Data Backup and Recovery

Most modern businesses depend on data in one way or another. For that reason alone, you need a reliable backup strategy. Luckily, you’ve got plenty of options.

You can opt for a full backup when you want to create a full copy of your data. If that doesn’t work for you, incremental backup is also an option. Here, you save whatever changes you’ve made since the last backup.

Then there’s differential backup. Choose this option if you wish to save all changes since the last full backup.

Recovery methods define how quickly and effectively you can restore your data. This involves testing your backups regularly to make sure they’re not corrupted and setting clear timelines for data recovery.

You need to know how long it will take to restore data. That way, you’ll be able to set realistic expectations with your team and stakeholders.

We’ve discussed DR strategies, now let’s discuss different technologies you can use to implement the strategy.

Cloud-Based Solutions

With cloud-based disaster recovery, you can store backups securely off-site. This technology makes sure your data is safe even if the disaster messes up your physical infrastructure (think hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes, etc.).

For example, services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure offer Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) for businesses that want to replicate entire environments in the cloud.

Cloud-based solutions are scalable and accessible, making them popular technologies for disaster recovery.

Scalability is one of the biggest advantages of cloud hosting. It works for small startups, multinational corporations, and anything in between.

Let’s say you’ve got an eCommerce website that’s booming. Unbeatable deals, great products, excellent service, everything’s just perfect! When you have cloud disaster recovery set up, your business should be able to handle increased workloads if a server goes down unexpectedly.

Don’t forget that cloud-based systems are highly accessible. Your tech team can recover data and systems from virtually anywhere with an internet connection.

Virtualization

Virtualization is just a fancy name for creating virtual versions of hardware, servers, or entire systems. The goal here is to make disaster recovery faster and more flexible.

Instead of relying on physical servers, virtualization platforms like VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V can quickly replicate and restore virtual machines after an outage. That’s a pretty neat party trick.

Virtualization, in the context of disaster recovery, comes with the ability to take snapshots. These are point-in-time copies of systems. For example, let’s say there’s a system failure caused by an update. All your IT team needs to do is roll back to a previous snapshot and restore operations.

With virtual environments, testing disaster recovery plans is easier and safer. You can simply create virtual sandboxes for simulating environments without affecting live systems.

Redundancy Systems

In most cases, redundancy is not a good thing. If you’re an employee, you don’t want your boss describing your role as “redundant.” That’s a one-way ticket to being laid off! But the tech industry is an exception. Redundancy is all about creating copies of important infrastructure. When one system fails, another takes its place.

It’s like having a super sub in a game of soccer. The best part is that redundancy isn’t just for servers; it also applies to network connections and even power supplies.

Geographic redundancy is another option. Where I live, we get earthquakes every few years. Tech companies in the area can have data centers in other states to help keep their systems online.

You can decide to host data in multiple data centers across different regions, too. If a hurricane hits one location, another site in a distant area can take over instantly.

In terms of data storage, you can implement redundancy using a Redundant Array of Independent Disks. RAID systems make sure that if one drive fails, the data remains accessible on other mirrored drives.

Cybersecurity Tools

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of being in tech, it’s that cybercriminals will find a way. It seems like there are more and more attacks every day — and there’s data to back that up! Every hour, there are almost 100 people who become victims of cybercrime. That’s up from just six in 2001.

That disturbing statistic means one thing: we need to change how we deal with these incidents. The strategy? Eliminate the need for disaster recovery in the first place. That’s where tools like firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and endpoint protection software come in.

Encrypting your data is important, too. Even if hackers get into your backups or sensitive info, encryption ensures the information remains unreadable without the proper keys. It essentially scrambles the words so they can’t read it. You can use solutions like BitLocker or VeraCrypt to add an extra layer of security to disaster recovery plans.

Don’t just sit back and wait for disaster to strike. You’ve got a lot of planning to do.

• Set your objectives: Define your Recovery Time Objective (RTO). This means how soon you want your systems restored. Obviously, the sooner the better — but be realistic. Then, determine your Recovery Point Objective (RPO), which is how much data loss you think is acceptable.
• Build a cross-functional team: Disaster recovery isn’t just an IT problem. Depending on how bad the disaster is, recovery might require collaboration from different departments. Each team member should know what’s expected of them, from technical troubleshooting to internal communication.
• Create and test the plan: You know the phrase: practice makes perfect! Simulate different disaster scenarios regularly to make sure your team knows their roles and your systems respond as you expect them to. If you have any gaps in your plan, they usually become pretty clear during testing.
• Make continuous updates and improvements: Technology evolves, and so do risks. Regularly review and update your plan to address new vulnerabilities, system upgrades, or changes in business operations. I always say that not updating your plan is as good as not having a plan at all.

When you’ve got a plan in place, and it’s well-tested, you can rest easy knowing you’re prepared for anything.

If you ever doubt the importance of disaster recovery, these real-life examples will change your mind. Industry standards rarely happen by accident. They usually come about when disaster strikes and we’re forced to learn from our mistakes.

In late October 2012, Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on businesses along the U.S. East Coast. Many companies lost access to their physical data centers because of flooding and power outages caused by the storm.

But businesses with cloud-based disaster recovery solutions were able to restore operations remotely. For example, financial institutions with redundant data centers in unaffected regions managed to minimize downtime and keep critical services running.

The 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack is yet another example. Hundreds of thousands of systems worldwide were impacted by this attack.

Organizations with strong disaster recovery plans, including regular data backups and cybersecurity protocols, managed to recover quickly. Those without backups or clear recovery processes had it rough.

Even tech giants aren’t immune. In 2021, Facebook experienced a global outage caused by a misconfigured server update. While the downtime lasted hours, the company’s well-documented disaster recovery protocols helped engineers isolate the issue and restore services efficiently.

The disaster recovery process isn’t a walk in the park. Here are some common challenges you may encounter along the way.

I could harp some more about how if you fail to plan, you plan to fail — but I won’t. Let me leave you with one final thought: Disaster recovery is about being ready before disaster strikes. It’s like hoping for the best but being ready for the worst-case scenario. And trust me, that’s one of the best ways to protect your systems.