The 5 W's of DRP

Your DRP, or disaster recovery plan, and business continuity solution are the only things standing the way between you and (obviously) disaster.

As residents of the Gulf Coast, we’re especially sensitive to the devastating potential of hurricane season, aka everyone’s “favorite” time of year between June 1^st and November 30^th.  However, disaster is a versatile master that can strike in more ways than one.

• Commercial fire
• Wildfire
• Theft and/or property damage
• Cyber attack
• Flooding
• Wind damage
• Power outage

You may be familiar with this disaster statistic already, but it’s worth mentioning that 40% of businesses never re-open after a disaster (Source: FEMA). Sometimes, even with a DRP, businesses with a poor business continuity solution just can’t recover in time to repair the damage done to their business.

What is DRP?

DRP is short for disaster recovery plan. It’s the measures you take from both an operational and IT standpoint to back up your company’s data in the event of a disruption from weather, hacking, or human error.

Who needs Disaster Recovery Plan?

Every business needs some form of DRP. In an increasingly digital world, a business’s most important assets are stored as data within your infrastructure. Even a simple one hour-long blackout can wreak havoc on your business’s ability to get back up and running without basic disaster recovery measures.

Where should the scope of a Disaster Recovery Plan reach?

Businesses need to establish their RTO’s (recovery time objectives) and RPO’s (recovery point objectives). Knowing how long your business can be without its data is important because it helps you develop a plan that’s cost-effective while meeting your business objectives. A good disaster recovery plan does more than just anticipate data loss. It assesses the risks of data loss across the entire organization within each department.

When should a business develop a DRP?

If your business some time before doesn’t already have a DRP, or if you’re part of the 40% of companies who’s DRP didn’t work when needed, you should develop a disaster recovery plan as soon as possible. As of the publication of this article, you still have time before hurricane season starts. However, especially in Texas and Louisiana, there are easily more factors that can cause disruptions than a hurricane.

The Most Important W: Why Do You Need a DRP?

A disaster recovery plan is the most basic level of protection you can leverage to support your business after it gets struck by a disaster, manmade or otherwise. No business, in any region of the country, is immune to disruption, yet there is still a relatively surprising number of organizations (75% to be exact) that still fail from a disaster readiness standpoint (Source: Disaster Preparedness Council.)

Let’s work together to get your DRP in place to avoid “too late” scenarios. Contact Centre Technologies to learn more about our disaster recovery options.

Additional Resources

In the spirit of preparing for the absolute worst, we’re running what might be considered the ULTIMATE disaster recovery and business continuity event in several cities.

Centre Technologies, Code 42, Tegile, and Zerto will be hosting our Avengers: Age of Ultron movie event. Join us on May 1, 2015 to learn more about enterprise DRP in:

Houston

Dallas

NOLA

Austin