The ability to respond promptly to unexpected business crises is important. Having a solid disaster recovery plan is crucial to business success. The strategy helps safeguard your business’s assets and maintains business continuity. It also helps mitigate the impact of unexpected events.
However, designing an effective disaster recovery plan requires that businesses go beyond the technological solutions. You should use a holistic approach that minimizes the following overlooked mistakes.
Failure to Assess the Risk Properly
Your disaster recovery strategy won’t be effective if risks aren’t assessed properly. Unfortunately, failing to assess risks often manifests in many ways. The most common issue is incomplete risk identification. Failing to identify all business risks exposes your business to unexpected events.
For instance, if you are creating a strategy against natural disasters, ensure all the potential disasters your business is exposed to are included. The same applies when creating an IT recovery plan. Include all the possible technological failures in your strategy.
The second challenge is failing to prioritize risks and underestimating their impact. Not all business risks have the same likelihood and severity. You should prioritize them based on their potential impact on business and allocate the necessary resources accordingly. On the other hand, don’t underestimate the impact of identified risks.
Depending on Single Solutions
Most businesses also make this costly mistake of depending on a single disaster recovery solution. This easily avoided mistake can leave your business vulnerable to failure. For starters, depending on a single solution creates a single point of failure. Relying on one technological platform or vendor creates a single point of failure if the solution becomes unavailable or fails when in need.
Limiting your business to one solution also limits your flexibility. You can’t easily adapt to unexpected events or changing circumstances. Having multiple solutions gives you greater flexibility. The best way to avoid this mistake is to adopt a diversified approach to disaster recovery. Bring multiple technologies, vendors, and deployment models onboard for better resilience and flexibility.
Ignoring the Impact of Human Factors
Overlooking the impact of human factors significantly undermines the effectiveness of your disaster recovery plan. Human factors are among the top contributors to business disasters, especially cybersecurity risks. Lack of training and awareness about their roles during a disaster is the most common challenge. Your employees may panic or worsen the situation during a disaster if they lack proper training.
Inadequate communication also impedes collaboration and coordination among your employees during a crisis. You should establish clear communication lines, including alternative communication options, for effective response.
Similarly, you should lay out clear roles and accountability for individual employees. Ambiguity in individual roles during a disaster can cause confusion. Have clearly established roles and responsibilities, with a chain of command to ensure that all team players know what’s expected of them.
Endnote
An effective disaster recovery plan should go beyond the technical solutions. It should be a comprehensive approach that touches on all factors. Addressing these commonly ignored aspects improves your businesses’ resilience and ability to better navigate through a crisis.
