Just as a disaster is an event that makes the continuation of normal functions impossible, a disaster recovery plan consists of the precautions taken so that the effects of a disaster will be minimized and the organization will be able to either maintain or quickly resume mission-critical functions. Typically, disaster recovery planning involves an analysis of business processes and continuity needs; it may also include a significant focus on disaster prevention.

Risk Analysis

The first step in drafting a disaster recovery plan is conducting a thorough risk analysis of your computer systems. List all the possible risks that threaten system uptime and evaluate how imminent they are in your particular IT shop. Anything that can cause a system outage is a threat, from relatively common manmade threats like virus attacks and accidental data deletions to more rare natural threats like floods and fires. Determine which of your threats are the most likely to occur and prioritize them using a simple system: rank each threat in two important categories, probability and impact. In each category, rate the risks as low, medium, or high.

Disaster recovery plan objectives

The key objective of a disaster recovery plan is to detail the key activities required to reinstate the critical IT services within the agreed recovery objectives. The most effective start point for any DR plan is the 'declaration of a disaster' once an incident has been deemed serious enough that 'forward fixing' at the primary location is impractical or is likely to result in an outage expending beyond the maximum tolerable outage. There are a number of common mistakes which organizations make when creating a disaster recovery plan, these relate to the level of detail they contain and the 'standalone' nature of their construction.

Disaster recovery services can help companies recover from virtually any type of disaster and ensure ongoing availability of mission-critical resources.

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