Is your business suffering from evil effect of a disaster? Did you have a plan to face the disaster? If no, then it is time to prepare a plan to face disaster of enterprise computing.
This article helps you in planning steps to follow whenever computing for your business is affected with disaster. Before going to the actual topic, we will define a disaster that enterprise computing faces.
What is a disaster for enterprise computing?
A disaster is damage that happens to computer and its usage. Damage can be to hardware or software. Hardware recovery can be done within a short span of time. But, software getting damaged and leading to loss of some crucial files and documents is difficult to recover.
Step-by-step approach to face disaster
- Emergency plan – This is the first step to follow as soon as disaster happened. For example, important contacts of clients and customers, system shut down, call persons who is expert in repairing and recovering important data.
- Back up plan – This is step next to emergency plan. Back up in the sense getting back the lost files. This plan specifies procedures to follow back up of files, alternate computer facility.
Back up plan involves use of three sites namely hot site (mirror image of original site that contains all data in original copy), cold site (site which operates only when critical site is unavailable, does not involve copy of data), warm site (site that relocates business after disaster but do not contain back up files and data from original copy).
- Recovery plan – once back up of files and documents related to business operations is done, recovery plan comes into picture. Recovery plan will make sure that all the back up data is restored properly. A planning committee comprises people proficiency in dealing such issues (within the enterprise) will organize recovery plan, some members will plan hardware recovery and some for software recovery.
- Test plan – It is the final step in disaster recovery. This plan operates whether all steps are performed well or not. It will add some steps if required during recovery plan. Changes may take place in this plan from time to time based on requirement.
A disaster management plan is similar to insurance for your company. It will compensate loss due to disaster and function like alert system warning you about disaster that is possible to repeat in future.