Tag: ITDR

10 Disaster Recovery Plan Mistakes to Avoid for Your Business

Posted on by Keith

Did you know that 60% of small businesses that suffer a cyberattack will shut down within six months? That’s a sobering statistic that underscores the importance of having a solid disaster recovery plan in place.

However, even with the best intentions, many organizations make common mistakes that can leave them vulnerable to downtime, data loss, and costly recovery efforts. Learn about the 10 Disaster Recovery Plan Mistakes to Avoid for Your Business.

In this article, we’ll explore some of the most common disaster recovery plan mistakes and provide tips to help you avoid them. Read on to learn how to keep your business safe from disaster! 

1) Not Having a Disaster Recovery Plan in Place

One of the biggest mistakes a business can make is not having a disaster recovery plan in place. A disaster recovery plan is a set of procedures and protocols put in place to help a business recover from a disaster.

A disaster can take many forms, such as:

  • A cyber attack
  • A natural disaster like a flood or earthquake
  • A power outage

A disaster recovery plan is a critical component of a business continuity plan or BCP meaning it’s essential for ensuring the survival of a business in the event of a crisis.

Without a disaster recovery plan, a business can suffer significant financial losses and may even go out of business. A disaster recovery plan can help a business recover from a disaster quicker, with less damage to the business. It can also help ensure that critical business functions are restored as quickly as possible.

Creating a disaster recovery plan doesn’t have to be complicated. You can find a disaster recovery plan template available online. This can be customized to fit the specific needs of your business.

2) Not Testing The Disaster Recovery Plan

Having a disaster recovery plan in place is a great start, but it’s not enough. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is not testing their disaster recovery plan.

Testing is a critical component of any crisis management plan. It helps identify weaknesses in the plan and ensures that it will work when it’s needed most.

Testing a disaster recovery plan can help a business in several ways, including:

  • Identifying gaps or weaknesses in the plan
  • Ensuring that the plan works
  • Providing an opportunity for improvement

Testing a disaster recovery plan doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. There are many different ways to test a plan, ranging from tabletop exercises to full-scale simulations. The key is to ensure that testing is done regularly and that the plan is updated based on the results of the testing.

By not testing the disaster recovery plan, a business is essentially taking a gamble that the plan will work when it’s needed most. This is a risk that no business should be willing to take. Especially, when the consequences of a failed recovery can be catastrophic.

3) Not Backing Up Data Regularly

Data is the lifeblood of any business, and losing it can be devastating. That’s why it’s essential to have a backup disaster recovery plan in place to ensure that data can be recovered in the event of a disaster. One of the most significant mistakes a business can make is not backing up its data regularly.

Here are some reasons why it’s crucial to back up data regularly:

  • Regular backups protect against data loss due to disasters
  • Many businesses must maintain backup copies of their data for regulatory compliance purposes
  • Having a plan in place can help a business maintain business continuity during a disaster and reduce the impact of downtime

There are several ways to back up data. These include cloud disaster recovery solutions and on-premise backup solutions. It’s essential to choose a backup method that’s appropriate for your business’s needs, taking into account factors such as:

  • Data volume
  • Recovery time objectives
  • Budget

Backing up data regularly is a critical component of any disaster recovery plan. Without regular backups, a business is at risk of losing data. This can have severe consequences.

4) Not Having A Clear Communication Plan

In times of crisis, clear communication is key to minimizing the impact on your business. Without a well-defined communication plan, employees, customers, and stakeholders may become confused. This can lead to delays in recovery efforts.

Here are some common mistakes to avoid when creating a communication plan for your disaster recovery IT plan:

Lack of Clarity on Roles and Responsibilities

Ensure that everyone involved in the recovery effort understands their role and responsibilities. This includes identifying who will be responsible for communicating with:

  • Employees
  • Customers
  • Vendors
  • Any other stakeholders

Not Having a Designated Spokesperson

Designate a single person or team to serve as the spokesperson for the company during a crisis. This person should have the authority to make decisions and communicate with all parties involved.

Failing to Establish Clear Communication Channels

Define the methods of communication that will be used during a crisis. This could include email, text messages, phone calls, or other methods. Make sure that all employees are aware of the communication channels and know how to access them.

Neglecting to Test the Communication Plan

Test the communication plan to identify any potential issues or gaps. This will help ensure that everyone knows what to do in the event of a crisis.

5) Not Training Employees on the Disaster Recovery Plan

A disaster recovery plan is only as good as the people who implement it. Your employees are essential to your business’s continuity. It’s crucial that they are well-prepared to handle any disaster that might strike.

Failure to train your employees on the disaster recovery plan can lead to:

  • Confusion
  • Miscommunication
  • Business disruption

Here are some common mistakes to avoid when training employees on the disaster recovery plan:

Assuming That Everyone Knows Their Role

Even if your employees are familiar with the business continuity vs. disaster recovery concepts, they may not know exactly what they need to do during a crisis. It’s essential they have clear guidelines and know their role in executing the disaster recovery plan.

Not Providing Enough Training

Don’t assume that one training session is enough to cover everything. Consider offering ongoing training and refresher courses. This will ensure that employees are always up-to-date and informed.

Neglecting to Test Employee Readiness

Testing the disaster recovery plan is not just about testing the technical systems. It’s also about testing employee readiness. Conduct regular drills and simulations to ensure that your employees can execute the plan effectively.

6) Not Using an All-Hazard Approach to Planning

One common misconception about disaster recovery planning is that it’s only necessary to plan for specific types of disasters, such as cyberattacks or natural disasters. However, a more effective approach is to use an all-hazard style of planning.

This approach to disaster planning focuses on preparing for all types of disasters, regardless of their cause, rather than just specific ones. An all-hazard plan takes into consideration all potential hazards that could impact your business, including:

  • Loss or reduction of people (e.g. employees, consultants)
  • Loss of property (e.g. facilities, assets, key equipment)
  • Loss of processes
  • Loss of technology (e.g. applications, data, networks)
  • Loss of vendor/supplier

An All-Hazard style plan recognizes that disasters can take many forms and can happen at any time. It provides a comprehensive framework for responding to any crisis and ensures that your business is prepared for a wide range of scenarios.

7) Relying Solely on Technology

Technology is an essential aspect of disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Relying solely on it, however, is a common mistake.

While technology can help you recover quickly, it is not always a failsafe solution. Here are some reasons why:

Technology Can Fail

Systems can malfunction, software can become outdated, and networks can go down. If you rely solely on technology, you could find yourself without a plan if your systems fail.

Technology Cannot Replace Human Decision-Making

In the event of a disaster, it is essential to have a plan in place that outlines how decisions will be made. Relying solely on technology can leave you without the human input necessary to make the right decisions in a crisis.

Technology Cannot Provide Context

When a disaster occurs, it is important to have a clear understanding of the situation. Technology alone cannot provide the context necessary to make informed decisions about how to respond.

What Businesses Can Do Instead

So, what can you do to avoid relying solely on technology for disaster recovery and business continuity planning?

Your disaster recovery and business continuity plan should involve more than just technology. It should also include procedures, policies, and guidelines that outline how you will respond in the event of a disaster.

Your plan should also involve people from across your organization, including:

  • Management
  • Employees
  • Stakeholders

By involving people in the planning process, you can ensure that your plan takes into account the needs of everyone involved.

8) Not Updating the Disaster Recovery Plan Regularly

Simply creating a plan is not enough. It’s essential to regularly update the plan to ensure that it remains relevant and effective.

Here are some reasons why not updating the disaster recovery plan regularly can be a costly mistake:

Changes in Technology

As technology continues to evolve, it’s essential to update your plan to keep up with changes. For instance, if a business migrates to a new software or cloud-based solution, the disaster recovery plan needs to be updated to reflect this change.

Changes in Business Processes

Business processes are continually changing. Your business should be updating your disaster recovery plan accordingly. If your business introduces new products or services or changes its operations, the disaster recovery plan needs to be updated to reflect these changes.

Changes in Personnel

If key personnel responsible for implementing the disaster recovery plan leave the company, the plan may become outdated. It’s essential to review and update the plan regularly. This ensures that new personnel get trained and can implement the plan effectively.

Changes in the External Environment

The external environment can be unpredictable. Businesses must consider external factors that may affect their operations. This can include natural disasters, cyber threats, or supplier issues.

Updating the disaster recovery plan regularly can help businesses prepare for these events and mitigate their impact.

9) Not Involving All Stakeholders in the Planning Process

Disaster recovery planning for IT is not just the responsibility of the IT department. The plan should involve all stakeholders in the organization. This ensures that all potential risks and impacts are taken into account.

Failure to involve all stakeholders can lead to inadequate planning and preparation. This could result in further complications in the event of a disaster.

IT staff members are responsible for managing the plan and implementing necessary procedures. Business owners and managers should be involved in the planning process as well. This ensures that the plan aligns with the overall business objectives and priorities.

You should train all employees on the disaster recovery plan. This can include their respective roles and responsibilities during a disaster.

Vendors and suppliers should be involved in the disaster recovery planning process to ensure that their services and products are available and functioning during a disaster. Depending on the organization, customers and clients may also need to be involved to ensure that their needs are taken into account.

10) Not Having a Cybersecurity Plan in Place

While disaster recovery planning is essential for a business to continue operating during a crisis, having a cybersecurity plan in place is equally important. Cyber attacks can cause significant damage to a business’s reputation, financial health, and operations. Without a cybersecurity plan, a business is vulnerable to data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Here are some common mistakes businesses make when it comes to cybersecurity planning:

  • Not understanding their cybersecurity risks
  • Not implementing security controls such as firewalls, antivirus software, and multi-factor authentication
  • Not training employees on cybersecurity best practices
  • Not having an incident response plan
  • Not regularly testing and updating their cybersecurity plan

Having a robust cybersecurity plan in place, in addition to DR solutions, can help a business better protect itself against cyber threats and minimize the impact of any cybersecurity incidents.

Don’t Make These Costly Disaster Recovery Plan Mistakes

Creating a disaster recovery plan is an essential part of any business’s operations. A well-executed disaster recovery plan can mean the difference between a minor disruption and a full-blown business catastrophe.

Don’t let these disaster recovery plan mistakes leave you unprepared; prioritize business continuity and disaster recovery planning today.

If you want to know more about disaster recovery planning and how to protect your company, contact us at any time!

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Learn, Practice, Implement, Challenge™ – The New Exercise Methodology to Increase Your Business Endurance

Posted on by Keith
Learn Practice Implement Challenge

 

Here at the Erwood Group, we’ve created a new exercise methodology. A new paradigm for the way a business exercises, trains, and prepares for a crisis. It is called Learn, Practice, Implement, Challenge™ – The new exercise methodology to Increase Your business endurance. 

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “crawl, walk, run” before, right?

Now, go ahead and tell me what you mean by that exactly, and I bet you’ll have some trouble.

“Crawl, walk, run”is a phrase I commonly hear especially around exercises. It’s a phrase that I hate. It’s just too vague, overly simplified, and completely nondescriptive, leaving out key details about just how we are supposed to progress through to something bigger and better. Can you tell me what you’re supposed to be trying to achieve?

Of course, you can’t.

That’s why many years ago I came up with the phrase Learn, Practice, Implement, Challenge™ which provides not only the descriptive details but the overarching goal of what we’re trying to accomplish with each stage of our exercise progression.

First and foremost, we have our Learning stage:

Learn

Sounds simple enough. At this stage, we teach our new plan owners and participants what they should be doing. Learning. It is designed to get everyone in the same place. As a team. They learn they have a plan, what is in the plan, where to find the plan, how to update and maintain the plan (and who is responsible for that maintenance), and we go through the plan, especially the strategy section and steps based on the strategies.

At this point we walk the participants through each strategy, asking questions about the strategy validity, any potential for this not to work, dependencies required for the strategy to work, and any additional strategies or sub-strategies we can add.

Next, we walk through each step required to implement the strategies. Making sure details needed are captured and not left too vague makes the information impractical at best and unimplementable during a crisis at worst. For instance, if a recovery strategy calls out the reliance on a secondary vendor that vendor should be called out by name. And then tertiary vendors and so on. Think in terms of, if someone else other than my main team members had to implement this plan, what information would they need? 

At the end of this exercise, we still conduct an after-action review and collect all the appropriate data such as lessons learned, what went well, what worked, what didn’t and how can we improve. We’ll also ask if they would like to add any additional input and what kinds of other disruptive events have, they experienced in the past. All of this is done to create familiarity and training for future exercises as well. The entire process is about having the participants learn new skills and improving their current existing plans. 

Once these learning stage exercises are conducted and the plans updated to reflect the exercise outcomes and additional strategies the work begins to set up the next round of future exercises for the practice stage.

Practice

Usually taking place about a year after the learning stage, the practice phase starts to get a little bit more intense. Still, in a tabletop setting in most cases, the participants are expected to know how to access their business continuity plans, how to access information within the plan, and how to walk through the steps to invoke the plan successfully. This is usually done and presented as part of a scenario impacting the business and forcing the plans to be activated.

At this practice stage, the idea isn’t to do anything too hard but to present the exercise, have the team attempt to achieve a predetermined set of goals, and even guide them into the next steps through a series of questions or injects. They may do so exceedingly well or may fail and learn a series of lessons. The idea though is to allow them to practice their plan in a controlled environment where they can feel safe and make mistakes. But not to push them to the brink where it becomes a stressful overwhelming event where they learn nothing and feel defeated.

In some cases, it may be necessary to hold several practice sessions with the team before moving on to the next stage of maturity in the exercise progression. Perhaps twice a year or more. More on this later in another post. 

The point is some teams will need to practice a few times before their comfort and confidence levels allow them to move onto the implementation stage. As with the learning stage, we hold an after-action review session immediately following each exercise.

Implement

Next, will be to implement the plans during an exercise. Here we start with what is the overall purpose of the exercise, as in, what are we exercising? Are we testing the ability to send notifications? Implement strategies? Can the steps be followed that are needed to initiate and complete the strategy? Can vendors be notified and coordinated with? Can customers be notified and coordinated with as expected? Can key personnel go to and work from an alternate location or remotely?

For all these implementations and more, are they successful? Did they fail? If so, why? Can the cause of the failure be easily determined? What worked well? What didn’t? Where is there room for improvement? How were internal communications? Were there errors? What were they? Did we use alternate applications to access information? How did that go? Are we tracking things manually? Did it work effectively? Where are there stumbling blocks and bottlenecks?

So, to summarize this section, Implementation exercises are exactly that, implementation of parts of the plan such as a select strategy, communications internally or externally, notifications to team members or other teams, or the implementation of the whole or parts of the plan that would be needed to fit the scenario.

Once teams have had the opportunity to implement their plans, we will start to Challenge them.

Challenge

The challenge phase is exactly what it sounds like, we create a scenario or series of scenarios that begin to challenge the plan owners and participants. This is done to expand the teams’ capabilities, build massive confidence, and the capability to learn and improvise based on what they know and the strategies available to them within the plan.

This challenge phase is never done with the idea of forcing the team to the brink and forcing failure, but to provide a safe learning environment to expand their capabilities. In other words, don’t make it so impossible that they do fail, but challenging enough that it forces them to think, act, and improve upon what is there so they can be ready for real incidents should they arise. Put another way, the challenge level exercises should elevate the team involved and make them better for participating in the exercise.

I’ve seen some exercise designers and facilitators develop exercises where they knock-off (kill) many or all key personnel, make it impossible to contact vendors, and inject failure at every turn. Not that some of these things can’t happen. They do. But the idea is to provide a positive learning experience for the people involved.

If they aren’t learning at every stage or phase along the way and are just placed in a stressful situation where failure is the only or main outcome, they will walk away unhappy, discouraged, with less confidence, and less likely to look forward to or participate in another exercise.

In fact, if this has been the case, you may need to reinitiate the exercises at the learn or practice phase level again just to build up your team. 

So, get out there, and Learn, Practice, Implement, and Challenge your business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management teams.

As part of our challenge phase as businesses mature in the exercise phase to improve their preparedness, we offer world-class training and exercise to take their endurance to the next level. We have partnered with an academy award-winning special effects team to create real-world events and scenarios in a safe and controlled environment.

 

Keith Erwood is the COO, Co-Founder, and Principal Managing Consultant of the Erwood Group. The Erwood Group focuses on business preparedness, business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management. We create enduring businesses that Prepare, Prevent, Profit through planning, mitigation and exercising. #Endurance>Resilience

Are You Up to the Challenge?