Business continuity (BC), as well as disaster recovery (DR), are mutually reinforcing practices that aid in an organization’s capacity to continue activities following an outage, disruption, or crisis.

Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) is more prominent than ever before in 2023. Every company, from modest businesses to multinational corporations, is reliant on digital technologies – making BCDR a business must-have. Further, the pandemic has demonstrated precisely how much damage an unexpected business interruption could cause to economies.

Yet, 14% of companies have not tested their BCDR plans in six months to three years, and research suggests that few are business continuity and disaster recovery best practices. Here are the 10 guidelines that you need to follow:

1. Evaluate the risk associated with different components and conduct a business impact analysis (BIA)

Risk analysis and BIA are essential tools for organizations tasked with creating a BCDR strategy. The act of identifying internal and external risks and threats is crucial to business continuity and disaster recovery. The risk research uncovers potential threats and their likelihood of occurrence. This risk assessment is complementary to the BIA, which assesses the possible effects of disruption.

A BIA includes financial analysis, but it additionally takes into account the non-fiscal aspects of unanticipated disruptions. Plus, the BIA determines the mission-critical services that a company must continue to perform following an incident, as well as the resources needed for sustaining those functions.

2. Determine WHEN to activate BCDR for optimal results

Before calling an untoward situation a disaster and activating the BCDR plan, businesses must consider multiple variables. The anticipated length of the disruption, the outage’s impact on the organization, the monetary burden of activating the BCDR plan, and the BCDR strategy’s potential to cause further interruption are among the most important considerations.

Ironically, the act of shifting from a company’s principal location to a secondary center, and then returning to the primary base of operations – after an incident – may significantly disrupt processes. Consequently, company leadership must carefully assess when to implement the BCDR plan. For instance, an organization may determine that a six-hour disruption is insufficient to warrant a disaster proclamation.

3. Be ready to advocate for changes and updates in BCDR

Developments in the threat landscape or the emergence of new business ventures could compel a company to increase its BCDR coverage. This has frequently been the case in 2022-2023, as companies return to office-based working and new risks come to light.

If the necessary resources for the extended BCDR strategy and recovery technologies are not included in your current budget, you may need to pursue additional funding. A proposal for investment should be based on the following:

• Developing a business proposal that highlights the advantages of the enhanced BCDR competencies
• Deciding if the updated BCDR strategy will have an impact on other domains, like cybersecurity.
• Obtaining funding, including product and service assessment
• Creating a request for procurement with adequate documentation

Remember that you must establish an equilibrium between the BCDR expense and the projected economic consequences of a specific disaster scenario. You do not want to devise a solution that is 10X times more expensive than the crisis in itself.

4. Test the business continuity and disaster recovery plans for any loopholes

Tabletop training, planned walk-throughs, as well as simulations are common test formats. Typically, test teams consist of the recovery supervisor and reps from every functional group. Typically, a tabletop exercise is conducted in a conference room, with the team examining the plan for flaws and guaranteeing every company division is represented.

In a planned walk-through, every member of the team examines his or her designated plan components extensively to identify weaknesses. Frequently, the team goes through the assignment with a specific catastrophe in mind. Some organizations incorporate disaster role-playing and associated activities into the planned walk-through. Any shortcomings should be addressed, and a revised plan ought to be sent to all relevant personnel.

5. Double your focus on documentation

The business continuity plan has to be drafted in accordance with the business’s risks and disaster recovery protocols. For instance, the plan should specify what staff members have to do in the event of a crisis, as well as the most stringent delivery timeframe for mission-critical IT support.

Identifying critical systems and compiling an inventory of key applications is also crucial. In addition, organizations must maintain an inventory of external contacts, such as financiers, IT specialists, and utility workers. As the coronavirus outbreak taught us, only companies with a well-documented business continuity plan had the ability to recover quickly.

6. Determine your unique level of risk resilience and the IT support it mandatorily requires

Given that every organization is unique and distinct, you must evaluate the risks and develop an individualized business continuity plan. For instance, in the instance of a bank, just a few seconds of delay may result in millions of dollars in damages. Healthcare institutions may risk critical patient care if there is downtime.

Additionally, a company’s recovery options must be determined based on the sector in which it operates. RTO and RPO are among the most vital concepts in this regard. RPO or Recovery Point Objective refers to the utmost permissible loss of data over a period of time. RTO or Recovery Time Objective is the time that passes between an interruption and a resumption of processes.

You can choose the appropriate DR alternatives along with recovery technologies by selecting the appropriate RPO as well as RTO based on your company’s business rules and guidelines.

7. Invest in redundancy for virtualized infrastructure

Following the pandemic, virtualization has become critical and pervasive within businesses. Nevertheless, a business continuity plan has to account for the necessity of a hybrid physical and virtual infrastructure.

Possessing virtual servers, storage spaces. as well as workstations reduces the risk of service interruptions, but virtual machines can still malfunction. Having a backup strategy for virtual machines should be among your top priorities, particularly if you’ve increased your virtualization blueprint for mission-critical processes between 2020 and 2023.

8. Consider partnering with a managed BCDR provider

Almost every IT services provider is going to say that they can help with service interruption repair and recovery. However, there is a significant difference between a partner who offers offsite backup facilities compared to a partner who has the necessary BCDR infrastructure. A managed service provider will offer a number of services:

• Military-grade infrastructure
• Tools for disaster recovery as well as backup
• Facilities for archiving and restoring
• Multiplatform administration of storage
• Well-known and proven expertise in emergency evac and shifting to any of several recovery locations

9. Work with procurement to evaluate vendors for BCDR readiness

Modern enterprises are not self-sufficient entities operating as islands in the sea. On the contrary, they are deeply interconnected institutions with profound interdependencies on third-party suppliers who deliver anything from mission-critical IT infrastructure to finished goods and basic materials. Identify every company-supplier partnership and the potential risk it presents to business continuity if the vendor’s supply is interrupted. What pressures are suppliers facing, and how robust/resilient are your associates when they’re under stress?

At the outset of the relationship, third-party suppliers must be subjected to stringent due diligence and constantly monitored for any signs of new threats. What exactly are their individual plans for business continuity, and are they enough to safeguard your company?

10. Look into colocation options

Finally, colocation offers companies with large-scale IT infrastructure a way to spread out their risk exposure across geographically diverse regions.

Built-in redundancies in third-party data centers are intended to encourage uptime and resilience. In addition, colocation provides multiple power sources and options for connectivity. This works as a backup route in the event that the primary pathway fails.

Several colocation service providers may additionally provide a selection of geographically dispersed data centers, allowing businesses to select the premises that most closely meet their specific requirements. An organization can choose a primary location closer to its headquarters for convenience and a secondary, more remote location for recovery following a disaster. Business continuity is also supported by colocation data centers’ scheduled maintenance programs and machinery updates, which optimize system availability and performance.

Conclusion

As disasters and business interruptions become more complex to deal with, these BCDR best practices will help your IT team prepare. You can also explore the potential of cloud computing to aid in disaster recovery planning (DRP), and use data recovery tools to retrieve lost information after minor incidents.