The best way I’ve found to create a DR plan that addresses as many potential issues as possible is to set yourself some scenarios. This helps to provide focus for you and others on what would happen in the event of something going wrong. Scenarios can include:
- Power Cut – Short term (30 minutes)
- Power Cut – Long term (2+ hours)
- Fire – Damaging IT infrastructure
- Fire – Damaging the building
- Flooding
- Union Strike (not one to put to the masses if this is possible!)
For these scenarios then set out what would happen?
- What would stop working immediately?
- How long would we be offline?
- Has it happened before? What did we experience then?
- What are the priorities for business continuity
- Who could/ couldn’t wait?
- Are there particular staff that are crucial, what if they were away?
Once you’ve spotted the items above you can then set about writing in brief the steps you would go through in order to get through the disaster. These steps should highlight the gaps that exist in order to get up and running again.
Once complete you can go about sourcing the required gap fillers and getting the DR Box ready which I’ll post on tomorrow.
IT for SME's 