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Top Tips For Developing A Business Continuity Disaster Recovery Plan in 2024

Businesses, nowadays, need to have a plan in motion for literally everything. From cyber threats to natural disasters, business owners must be prepared for everything that life throws at their companies.

But a business can easily prepare for such threats if they employ a business continuity disaster/ recovery plan.

A BCD/DR plan is a detailed process that focuses on resuming business processes during disasters with the goal of minimizing revenue losses.

Below we will explain our top tips for developing an effective BCD.

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Device a Consistent Plan with All Plan Components Fully Accessible

Spending months of your time to prepare a plan in the case of a disaster is more beneficial than ever, nowadays. However, a BCD plan requires a lot of resources to pull off. Most companies document their BCD plan in software such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Visio, or even as a PDF file.

But these documents hold vital information that must be fully accessible for all employees in the case of an emergency. Regardless of the storage location, whether that be on the server hard drive, a hard physical copy, or even on the cloud, they must be fully accessible by everyone so that the plan could be set in motion when a disaster arrives.

Build A Separate Data Center Outside Your Region

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Kyocera Intelligence advises that businesses and companies should always have a secondary backup data center at least 150 miles from the primary data center. If your company is based in New York City, don’t build another data center down the road but rather someplace that likely won’t be affected by the same disaster as your primary data center.

This is a solid strategy that has proven to work throughout the years. Businesses that work with lots of data tend to use this strategy and while sometimes keeping the secondary data center close to your primary does have its advantages, it should be assessed by a consulting expert firstly.

Keep the BCD Plan Up to Date

Building a BCD plan takes lots of time, to say the least. But a lot may change between the initial inception of the plan and the moment a disaster occurs. Because of this, you and your company have to take the time off your busy schedules to keep the BCD plan up to date.

It’s no use having an outdated plan when you’ve developed a new system application that runs on the cloud, rather than the server.

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Test It To Make Sure it Works

We would never know if a plan truly works without a successful test run. In the midst of chaos, crisis, and anarchy, your carefully designed BCD plan might not work. And this can be the most dangerous as people rely on a BCD plan to push them over the edge when an emergency occurs.

By testing your BCD plan, you are addressing whether or not the plan works. If it doesn’t work, then revise it and re-design the plan based on the valuable feedback you’ve gathered from the test. If the plan works, then all you need to do is keep it up to date according to the latest changes in your business. You can also read more business preparedness tips on Pocketstop.com and check some of their tips.

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