Prepare for business continuity in the event of a disaster with a comprehensive DR solution.
You expect your business information to always be accessible, backed up, and recoverable. But what happens when a disaster occurs out of the blue? It can happen. If there’s a cyberattack, a natural disaster, or a simple user error and your company is not prepared, the impact can be catastrophic, crippling. Your company can lose productivity and revenue and suffer a damaged reputation and customer relationships without a proper DR solution (disaster recovery solution).
No company is immune to disruptions. Most businesses only consider their data security when it’s too late. A robust continuity plan will enable you to more likely react confidently and quickly with a DR solution when a disaster happens. The following actions will help your organization protect your data today and streamline your continuity planning efforts for maximum efficiency.
Prepare for What Could Happen
One of the first things to do is to assemble a team in case of a disruption. The arrangement should have a hierarchy where each person knows his or her responsibility in case of an incident. Set up a backup person for each responsible person, so that if someone’s not available, another person can take over.
Set up internal and external communications in case something happens. Create a list of who to contact within the company and who to contact externally, such as customers, suppliers, third parties, and more.
What information is vital to your business? Where is it located? How would your business be affected if those data assets were lost? Take inventory of your essential digital and physical information.
Keep a strong data backup plan for your essential software and physical data. Store it regularly, remotely, and redundantly in physical and cloud-based locations. Test the backup system regularly.
If a disaster happens, you will want to be able to retrieve data efficiently so that business can continue unimpeded. Make an incident plan for retrieving data, including a secondary recovery site. Be sure to isolate sensitive information. Consider 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) and Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) network intrusion monitoring tools.
Educate your staff regularly with simulated testing that measures preparedness. Update your plan with the latest scenarios.
Identify Threats and Their Impact
Cyber threats are constantly evolving and can come from multiple directions. Identify the threats to your organization and their impact on your business. Look at antivirus logs and audit logs to find the cause. Do a full antivirus scan.
Pay attention to clues that let you know something is amiss. Computers may be running slowly, users may be locked out, ransom demands may be made, employees may receive strange emails, their internet searches may be redirected, malicious actors may make unauthorized payment requests, and/or workers may witness unusual account activity.
Identify the what, who, and when of the problem. Investigate what services, programs, and/or hardware is not working and in what areas of the business. Was data lost? Was data disclosed? Was data corrupted? If so, what data? What is the impact of the problem on staff, business, customer service, and/or the external supply chain? Who reported the problem or problems? Who designed the system? Who manages the system that was affected? When did the problem or problems occur?
Resolve and Report
If your information technology is externally managed, contact the relevant people. If you manage your own information technology, do such things as replacing infected hardware, restoring software with backups and patches, cleaning infected machines, and changing passwords. If the impact was significant, report it to law enforcement, inform your staff and customers, and seek legal advice.
Review and Make Improvements
Review what happened, reassess the risks, and make improvements to your plan.
Disaster recovery strategies are complicated. Strategies vary, depending on each organization’s structure, system, environment, and the location and the nature of the event. For a more comprehensive preparedness plan and DR solution, contact our trusted Green Zebra Smart Networks business advisors at http://www.gzsmartnetworks.com/contact for an assessment. Our technicians are certified and have several years of experience.