The Importance of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning

    LONDON, ENGLAND, February 03, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- There are several issues that come into play when dealing with a disaster recovery plan and the two main factors are keeping staff as productive as possible during the disaster as well as making sure that remote users who attempt to access your resources during the disruptions are identified. These two challenges are difficult to cope with as it entails balancing productivity against security.

The importance of disaster recovery business continuity planning has to be taken extremely seriously and as such there are packages available which allows a business to keep up their security but allows remote employees to get into the more sensitive company information by allowing them access via a secure means.

Apart from the above, there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration when planning a disaster continuity plan and these include the following:

- To identify your business's most crucial function
- To identify which of your staff is essential to the running of your business to enable it to function on a basic level.
- To ensure that all staff are aware of their roles during the disruptions
- To ensure there is an emergency help desk or hotline for customers to use
- To evaluate remote access capabilities during times of disruptions
- To make sure that all end users are aware of the security issues
- To make use of secure ID software which enables end users to access all devices ready for deploying seed records when the recovery plan is implemented.

The most important objective of any disaster recovery plan is to ensure that a company knows how to deal with a disaster whether natural or human-induced when it happens. The steps set in place have to be well constructed and then implemented as rapidly as possible to ensure the company gets back on track with the minimum amount of damage to its productivity.

In order to do this and then set it up in such a way that it works quickly and efficiently, means knowing the organization's business processes inside and out and this includes its IT infrastructure, data backup, resources, continuity needs as well as the disaster prevention techniques which are in place. Each company may have different requirements depending on the types of businesses they are running but there are key factors which can be set out into three definite phases of a recovery plan which are as follows:

- Data collection
- Plan development and testing
- Monitoring and maintenance

If possible a company should have a disaster recovery team within its organization that has been actively involved in the planning of the recovery plan and who know exactly how to implement it when it is needed. But these plans need to be put to the test before any actual disaster really happens and this is where any problems or weaknesses within a contingency plan will show themselves. This enables a company to make sure that the recovery plan they have in place actually works and limits the time and damage caused to the business to be kept to a minimum. A business IT Support company can perform audits of security and also monitoring, so it is possible to outsource a lot of this work.

Any disaster recovery plan must allow for business continuity at all times and has to be considered as a crucial part of today's network-based business environment which relies heavily on technology in order to remain productive in a very competitive world.

ITLab have been going for over eleven years (a long time for an IT company) and during that time have helped hundreds of clients, grown their team to over one hundred people and picked up some fantastic awards along the way too. If you are looking for London IT support then look no further.

Website: http://www.itlab.co.uk

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