Flash Floods, Earthquakes, Tornadoes… Oh My! Why a Disaster Recovery Plan is necessary.

With the recent tornadoes striking central and southern Ohio, the earthquake that hit northeastern Ohio and the flash floods from this past weekend, Mother Nature has not given Ohio a break on the natural disaster front. This is where a Disaster Recovery Plan comes into play.

The tornadoes that struck Ohio on Memorial Day weekend left over 60,000 homes and business without power and causing extensive damage to both.* On June 10, 2019, a 4.0 magnitude shook up northeast Ohio, whether you felt it or not. This disaster did not cause major damage or serious injury.** A flash flood watch was issued over the weekend of June 14-16 due to heavy rainfall in the Northern part of Ohio.  Cars were stalled and stranded in floodwaters near Barberton and water was entering homes on the west side of Akron.***

While most of these didn’t cause the damage that they had the potential to, like destroying homes and businesses, causing them to have to rebuild or not be able to conduct business as usual, they could have. With the increase of natural disasters this year compared to the last few years, businesses need to be prepared now more than ever before.

Your failure to plan is like planning to fail. Your DRP is no longer an option, it’s a necessity. Downtime can be critical and cause irreversible damage to the company you’ve worked so hard to build.  Planning and diversity are the main goals and topics that MUST be in place for your business!

What should be included in a disaster recovery plan?

1. Statement, overview and main goal of the plan
2. Contact information for key personnel and disaster recovery team members
3. Description of the entire IT network and the recovery site. Identifying the most critical IT assets and determining the maximum outage time. Get to know the terms Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). RPO indicates the maximum ‘age’ of files that an organization must recover from backup storage for normal operations to resume after a disaster. If you choose an RPO of five hours, then the system must back up at least every five hours. The RTO is the maximum amount of time, following a disaster, for the business to recover its files from backup storage and resume normal operations. If your RTO is three hours, it can’t be down longer.
4. List of software, license keys and systems that will be used in the recovery effort.
5. Technical documentation from vendors on recovery technology system software.
6. Summary of insurance coverage.
7. Proposals for dealing with financial and legal issues, as well as media outreach.

The word “disaster” carries an unsavory tone for most, but disasters DO happen. Every business must have a plan in place to guarantee business continuity and overall company survival. Whether the disaster is man-made or natural, your Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) should cover any data, hardware and software that is critical to keeping your business functioning properly. CTG can help you develop a DRP that’s right for your business, your risks, and your budget. Don’t let tornado’s, floods, or earthquakes ruin your business and keep your business from operating.

*USA Today

**NBC News

***Weather.Com