Every organization has a fiduciary duty to identify and mitigate essential risks to its business. While some cyber security incidents can be averted, it is impossible to rule out the possibility of a devastating security incident. No matter how careful organizations are in ensuring compliance with regulations or implementing cybersecurity measures, the chances of a disaster always loom over them in today's digital-first world. Businesses not only need to have a plan to prevent disaster from happening but also a plan to respond appropriately in the worst-case scenario. CIOs and other leaders in an organization must brainstorm to establish and continuously update an incident response plan as well as a a disaster recovery plan that, together, minimize the downtime and impact in the case of a security incident. 

A disaster recovery plan outlines what needs to be done in case of an emergency. It defines the roles and responsibilities of various teams and individuals, such as DR teams or IT managers, within the organization in mitigating the impact on business. It also identifies the critical areas that need to be restored on a priority basis. 

Here is why every business needs a disaster recovery plan.

Downtime is costly

Leaving everything else aside, the primary reason why your business needs a DRP is that downtime affects your bottom line. The longer your business operations are at a standstill after a disaster or a security incident, the more impact it has on your revenue and reputation. Downtime costs you more than just money. It affects customers' trust in your business and may even cause you to lose valuable prospects and clients. 

A disaster recovery plan ensures that downtime after an incident is minimized. CIOs and other executives, as well as managers, are responsible for assessing how much downtime is acceptable for the critical business areas. Based on this, they need to build a solid recovery plan to restore those operations within the acceptable timeframe.

Data is crucial

The biggest impact of a security incident for most businesses is the sheer amount of data that is compromised. Businesses risk losing all the data that took them years to collect and consolidate. A disaster recovery plan usually has clear instructions on how data can be efficiently restored, recovered, and rebuilt. It guides the whole organization to effectively identify crucial data, how and when it is backed up, how and where it is stored, and how it can be recovered. This ensures that even if data is compromised in a security incident, the business does not have to halt as critical data can be restored from the backup. The business can keep functioning while the DR team works to normalize the situation.

Preparedness for human errors

A disaster does not always have to be a cybersecurity incident or a natural calamity. Your business can also be at risk because of human errors at times. For instance, if an employee accidentally deletes critical files or if an employee's account is compromised due to insufficient security measures. Chances of such errors are always present and organizations must be prepared to handle them efficiently. A disaster recovery plan covers such incidents caused by human errors as well.

Summing up

It is important that businesses understand and acknowledge the threats that hover over them. The aim should be prepared for all kinds of outcomes. Not everything is within our control. For disasters that are beyond our control, a disaster recovery plan can mitigate the damage.

What can Damovo do for you?

Damovo has dozens of years of experience in assisting customers to identify critical risks, prioritize them, and prepare for them. Through our risk management services and our cyber incident tabletop exercises we work with our customers to efficiently prepare for cyber security incidents. On top of that our penetration testing services can mimic real world attackers in order to identify weaknesses in your controls and processes and really put your cyber security capabilities to the test.