Assembling Disaster Recovery Plan for your organization

I had to create a disaster recovery template from scratch recently and found it quite an exhaustive exercise. So here I’m also sharing a complete template anyone can use for their own purpose: https://pavlosobchuk.gumroad.com/l/disaster-recovery-template

Introduction

In the current fast-paced and technology-driven world, businesses, regardless of size, encounter various risks and threats that can interrupt their operations and compromise their valuable data. To reduce the possibility of such risks, organizations depend on clearly defined and structured protocols, especially when the risk becomes a reality.

Your company must respond promptly in the event of a cybersecurity attack, natural disaster, or any other disruptive occurrence. Luckily, more often than not, there are some procedures in place in an organization. You may have heard of disaster recovery plans, which are often considered as a one-time written document that collects dust and no one knows its whereabouts.

If you’re searching for a Disaster Recovery Plan on the internet, you may not find anything substantial. However, I’m here to help bridge that gap by providing you with a detailed explanation of the ins and outs of Disaster Recovery Plan documents. Additionally, I can offer you a finely-tuned template that can be customized for use in your own organization or department. Let’s take a closer look.

Also, just FYI: I’ve created a Notion template for Disaster Recovery Plan that can be customized and used in your organization. It is completely free, although any gratitude is highly appreciated:

https://pavlosobchuk.gumroad.com/l/disaster-recovery-template

What does the Disaster Recovery plan entail?

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a documented set of procedures and strategies that outline how an organization will respond, recover, and restore critical business operations and IT systems in the event of a disruptive incident or disaster.

Essentially, the focus of the document is on recovering from a major IT system malfunction. It’s all about bouncing back from adversity. To achieve efficiency in this matter, it is essential to assess risk, analyze the impact of partial failure, establish acceptable metrics for recovery, and propose a recovery plan. Here are the key components of a comprehensive disaster recovery plan:

1. Risk assessment. It is essential to assess potential hazards and weaknesses that could potentially affect business operations, including natural disasters, power outages, cyberattacks, or human errors. It is also crucial to pinpoint the crucial systems, procedures, and data that require protection.
2. Business Impact Analysis (BIA). Assess the possible consequences of any disruption in different areas of the business, such as finances, operations, reputation, and legality. Arrange the restoration of systems and procedures according to their importance to the company.
3. Recovery Objectives. When setting up systems and processes, it’s important to establish recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). The RTO indicates the amount of downtime that can be tolerated before recovery is necessary, while the RPO determines the maximum allowable amount of data loss.
4. Response Procedures. It is important to have a well-defined plan of action in the event of a disaster or disruption. This involves activating an incident response team, setting up communication protocols, and prioritizing the safety of all employees and stakeholders involved.
5. Training and Testing. It is important to provide regular training for employees regarding their roles and responsibilities in the event of a disaster. Performing drills and simulation exercises can help to ensure that the plan is effective, highlight any areas that need improvement, and refine the procedures accordingly.

How should one respond to a disaster using a plan?

In every plan, it is crucial to have a segment dedicated to the disaster recovery team. This portion must specify the individual accountable for leading the team and establish a well-defined reporting structure. When a disaster ensues, the designated leader should swiftly assemble the team and adhere to the established procedures:

1. Notify senior management.
2. Contact the disaster recovery team members.
3. If possible, assess the severity of the disaster.
4. Implement a proper application recovery plan dependent on the extent of the disaster.
5. Monitor progress.
6. Contact the backup site and establish schedules.
7. Contact all other necessary personnel.
8. Contact vendors–both hardware and software.
9. Notify users of the disruption of service.

Real-life scenario: Core infrastructure failure

Let’s take a look at one real-life scenario and how the response and prevention plan should be described for such case. In the event of an infrastructure failure, such as hardware or network failures, the disaster recovery plan should include procedures for restoring the affected components. This may involve utilizing backups, redundant infrastructure configurations, or leveraging cloud-based infrastructure services.

Scenario: One or more servers shut down.

Possible Causes: Server malfunction, security breach, power outage

Entities at risk: Software systems and business processes dependent on systems.

Impact: From partial to complete dysfunction of the software system.

Alerting and Prevention

• Implement redundancy and high availability measures in your infrastructure design to minimize the impact of single points of failure. Use load balancers, clustering, or distributed systems to ensure that critical components have backup resources and can handle increased loads.
• Monitor key metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, network traffic, and application response times, to identify potential issues proactively.
• Regularly apply security patches, software updates, and firmware upgrades to your infrastructure components, including servers, networking devices, and storage systems. Establish a schedule for routine maintenance tasks and follow best practices provided by the vendors to keep your infrastructure up-to-date and secure.
• Perform regular capacity planning exercises to ensure that your infrastructure can handle the expected workload and growth. Scale your infrastructure horizontally or vertically as needed to accommodate increased demand or changing requirements.
• Implement strong access controls, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and encryption mechanisms to safeguard your infrastructure and data.
• Perform penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and security assessments to uncover and address any weaknesses.
• Monitor and maintain the environmental factors that can impact your infrastructure, such as temperature, humidity, power supply, and network connectivity.
• Invest in ongoing training and skill development for your IT staff to ensure they have the knowledge and expertise to manage and maintain your infrastructure effectively.

Recovery Plan

1. Quickly identify the affected components or services causing the infrastructure failure.
2. Activate the Incident Response Team.
3. Notify internal stakeholders, such as management, employees, and relevant departments, about the service outage.
4. Investigate the root cause of the server outage by analyzing system logs, error messages, and any available diagnostic information. Engage with relevant technical support teams, service providers, or vendors to troubleshoot and identify the underlying issue.
5. Implement immediate mitigation measures to restore partial functionality or alternative workarounds, if feasible. Follow documented recovery procedures, such as failover mechanisms, backups, or redundancy configurations, to restore the affected service.
6. Conduct thorough testing to ensure the restored service is functioning correctly and meeting performance criteria. Validate the functionality and integrity of the recovered system through user acceptance testing and monitoring of key metrics.
7. Continuously communicate updates on the progress of recovery efforts to internal stakeholders and users. Provide clear instructions on any temporary workarounds, if applicable, to minimize disruption and maintain business continuity.
8. Conduct post-incident analysis. Document the root cause and identify opportunities for improving system resilience.
9. Execute follow-up actions: Implement preventative measures to minimize the risk of failure in the future and update the disaster recovery plan.

Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Here you can find the complete disaster recovery template you will ever need for your organization. Any appreciation is very welcome!

https://pavlosobchuk.gumroad.com/l/disaster-recovery-template