disaster recovery

Disaster recovery deals with protecting organisations from the effects of anything that puts an organisation’s operations at risk: crippling cyber attacks and equipment failure or power outages, as well as fires, floods or even a simple spilt cup of coffee on a keyboard.

Often the biggest consequences can be that the backups either cannot be found or don’t work when needed. It can even include loss of software and licence keys.

A disaster recovery plan documents policies, procedures and actions to limit the disruption to an organisation in the wake of a disaster. Just as a disaster is an event that makes the continuation of normal functions impossible, a disaster recovery plan consists of actions intended to minimize the negative effects of a disaster and allow the organisation to maintain or quickly resume mission-critical functions.

Disaster recovery steps may include restoring servers or mainframes with backups, re-establishing private branch exchanges (PBX) or provisioning local area networks (LANs) to meet immediate business needs.