IT disaster recovery plan: are you prepared for disaster?

What is an IT disaster recovery plan? 

An IT disaster recovery plan is a strategy set out to help an organisation quickly resume its operation after an unexpected event. At Technical Drive, we can support with a number of disaster recovery solutions, a primary one being a disaster recovery plan that is well documented, structured, and regularly reviewed to maintain its viability.

Many companies put off thinking about IT disaster recovery planning because it is hard to consider all eventualities. When bogged down by the day to day running of a business it can be a lot easier to hope it’ll never happen to you, and think that you are resilient and would deal with it at the time. 

In fact 90% of companies that suffer a disaster go bust 8 or 9 months after the disaster - so it is worth your time to prepare in advance.

Having an IT disaster recovery plan shouldn’t be / isn’t optional

• You may be covered by insurance but what then? 
• What about the in-between? 
• Do you need a serviced office? Their leases are through the roof but you have to agree to it because you have no choice as you need to carry on working somewhere.
• Upheaval for staff, then what? 
• New computers…how quickly can you get that set up? 
• What’s happening to your customers when this is happening?

The worst time to need to be answering these questions is when you are in the middle of a disaster. Having an IT business continuity plan in place will mean that you have answered these questions in advance, minimising the impact on your business.

If you have disaster recovery plans in place, it may also help you win clients or differentiate you from the competition! If your potential customers know that you have a plan in place no matter what, they will feel supported and in safe hands.

What type of things might I need to consider when devising a disaster recovery policy?

There are many things that could go wrong, including:

• Hardware failure
• Unexpected disruptions in power or connectivity
• Cybercrime
• Natural disaster
• Human error

At Technical Drive we can support you to consider all of these, to ensure that you have a robust IT backup and disaster recovery plan that will be there when you need it. 

And you can rely on us, because we’ve put an IT backup plan into practice many times before.

In one example, one of our clients was required to vacate their premises by a certain date but their new premises weren’t ready to move into - a scenario perhaps not automatically thought of as a ‘disaster’ but which could have been devastating for the company nevertheless. Not least because it was during the pandemic which meant a lot of users were already working from home and relying on their connectivity to the core infrastructure.  

We were able to move their servers to the Technical Drive Data Centre (over a weekend) allowing all workers to login and continue to work as normal on Monday morning until the new premises became available.

A disaster has happened and we don’t have a disaster recovery plan. What now?

Don’t panic, we’re here to help!

Whether you have been hacked by cyber criminals, or indeed your building has burned down, our rapid response team are standing by. Even if you are not a current client of Technical Drive, we can respond immediately to rectify and resolve issues from minor IT nuisances to major network disasters. 

Our Head Office, Service Desk and Disaster Recovery Suite support over 5,000 devices and 600 servers, across over 200 Birmingham-based clients.

We can offer remote IT support too, so whether it is your core infrastructure in the cloud or a problem with your laptop at your home, whether you have hybrid working or locally based in one office, we can log into your IT remotely and solve your problem.

If you would like to discuss how we can help you with a current disaster, or with your IT disaster recovery plan, please get in touch.