How to Create Your Own Data Disaster Recovery Plan

No business should be without a comprehensive data disaster recovery plan. With so many causes for data loss from human error and theft to hardware failure and natural disasters, you never know when you may need a data disaster recovery plan. To help you create your own data disaster recovery plan, follow the below steps:

1. 1. Become familiar with your data – Most business owners have a strong understanding of how their overall business operates, but are not familiar with the data that contributes to this functioning. It is important to become familiar with your data so you know what is most essential to the operations of your business. To help you decide, pretend a network failure wiped out all your business’ data, what information would you miss the most?

1. 2. Decide how you are going to backup your data – Depending on how much data you have and what kind of information you need to protect will have a huge impact on how you are going to back your data up. Most small businesses use online backup with other options available including tape or backup to an external media. Whichever method you use, you need to make sure your backup is offsite, reliable and available 24×7.

1. 3. Select someone to be responsible for your backup – Knowing your data and which methods to use to backup your data are of little to no use if no one is performing the backup. You or a reliable employee must be responsible for managing backups within your business. Plan a schedule for when backups are to occur and make sure the individual in charge records when backups are performed.

1. 4. Test run your recovery process – After getting your backup plan in place, make sure you are able to recover your data. Perform a test run to ensure everything goes according to plan and you are able to successfully recover your data; your backup is useless if you can’t recover information from it.

1. 5. Stay on top of your backup and recovery – It is crucial to review your backup regularly to make sure that you are backing up all the information you need. Also be aware of new additions to your server or network. When you add new components, it is important these items are accounted for in your backup and data disaster recovery plan.

If you aren’t a tech-savvy business owner or simply feel overwhelmed by the idea of developing your own disaster recovery plan, turn to the professional IT consultants at Syndeo Communications. After a careful audit of your business, we can help implement a disaster recovery plan that is tailored to your business and provide continuous monitoring and support to prevent the loss of data essential to your daily operations. Don’t wait until it’s too late and contact the data disaster recovery San Diego experts at 760.650.3300.