Ongoing Backup and Recovery Preparedness

Creating and documenting processes that detail how to properly back up and recover from a disaster is an essential step in a disaster recovery project. Equally important as creating these processes is periodically reviewing, validating, and updating the processes. Disaster recovery planning should not be considered a project for the current calendar year; instead, it should be considered an essential part of regular business operations and should have dedicated annual budget and assigned staff.

Each year, many businesses, business divisions, or departments update their computer and network infrastructure and change the way they provide services to their staff, vendors, and clients. In many of these cases, the responsible information technology staff, cross-departmental managers, executives, and employees are not involved or properly informed in advance of the execution or implementation of these changes. Computer and network infrastructure changes can have ripple effects throughout an entire organization during transition and during disaster and failure situations, so proper planning and approval of changes should always be performed and documented.