After you’ve spent countless hours with your IT support provider compiling the most detailed disaster recovery (DR) plan possible, your business is finally safe from any disaster...right? If only it were that easy.
DR is a solution many business owners willingly fund and begin but few actually complete. The truth is, creating a plan is only the first step in the process. No matter how detailed it might be, a DR plan has no value for your business if it doesn’t work when disaster strikes. That’s why periodically testing and verifying whether a DR plan will work when it’s needed is crucial.
To achieve your DR plan’s desired results, create a disaster scenario unique to your organization. If your business is situated in Atlanta, for example, then you might want to prepare for floods, storms, power outages, and cyber attacks. Afterwards, perform a series of tests to ensure recovery success. Below are three fundamental testing methods to incorporate into your DR plan evaluation.
- Plan review
- Tabletop testing
- Full-scale test
One of the most important tests you should conduct regularly is a plan review. For 60-90 minutes, DR planners discuss current processes and propose potential improvements to the plan.
In a tabletop test, employees, IT administrators, and a DR facilitator gather in a room to walk through all the necessary processes of a DR plan. The point of the exercise is to test whether team members know their roles and duties in an emergency. Diligent employees should know whom they need to call, when they need to call, and how to manage less-informed individuals about the process.
Although this testing method isn’t a replacement for technical testing, the practical errors and inconsistencies you identify here can show you whether the human element of your DR plan needs work.
A full-scale test evaluates your DR plan as whole. DR teams and administrators simulate potential disasters like a contained power outage, and then test whether mission-critical systems can recover to a secondary site and data backups are intact. As it’s a simulation, most companies keep the full-scale tests a secret from employees to realistically gauge how well they respond to disaster situations.
How often should you test your DR plan
Over time, a disaster recovery plan gradually becomes less and less accurate. This is most likely due to the constant changes in technologies, business strategies, and personnel.
For that reason, it’s imperative to test your DR plan as often as possible.
Aim to conduct plan reviews every quarter or once a month to keep your recovery strategy up to date. Tabletop and full-scale tests take a bit more time and resources to conduct, so try to perform a test one or two times a year, or after any major changes in your organization.
Improve on failure
Ideally, you want your organization to meet your predefined recovery point and recovery time objectives to pass all the aforementioned tests with flying colors. But even if your DR plan fails these simulations, all is not lost. After all, exposing weaknesses in your DR plan now is better than uncovering them when it’s too late. Just remember that when you do identify these problems, take immediate steps to readjust your DR plan, employee training, cloud backups, and virtualized servers.
Testing a recovery plan may seem tedious, but it’s a crucial step your business can’t afford to miss. If you need some pointers on how to pass your DR plan test, the IT support team at IntelligISTM are always happy to oblige. Visit us at www.intelligis.com to ace that DR test.
