Did you know that between 2015 and 2017, the U.S. was the most targeted country by cyber-terrorists with 303 known large-scale attacks?
Whether in the political world or in the high street, cybercrime is becoming a growing threat to everyone. What can you do about it? Ensuring that you have a professional company protecting you can give you peace of mind.
However in the event that the worst happens and cyber-crime is successful, every company should have disaster recovery plan steps outlined in advance.
What should a company put in their recovery plan? Check out our comprehensive guide below
1. Analyze Your Risk
Start by analyzing what form a cyberattack is likely to take. Are you are a high ranking corporation that could be a target for Ransomware? Do you take a social or political stand that may make you a subject of a Denial-of-Service attack?
Start by analyzing who may want to attack you and for what reason.
2. Prioritize Your First Steps
Once you have identified likely attack methods, prioritize your response. What are the minimum services that you need to get up and running to maintain production?
You may also want to calculate what the cost of your system being offline will be. What will be the effect after 3 hours, one day and so on?
3. Plan Your Backups According to Your Needs
Backing up to a local hard drive will likely not be a sufficient level of security to get you through a disaster. Consider working with professionals such as this company for more effective data protection options.
There are many benefits to establishing a Recovery Point Objective. This means that they establish how much data they are can lose in an attack and what its effect would be.
4. Appoint a Critical Response Team
It may only take a small team of personnel to restore basic production after an attack. However, company management should assign and if necessary give training to this team ahead of time. They should be fully aware of what their roles will be in each situation.
Each person needs to have multiple contact details and, if possible, a back up in case they are unavailable during an incident.
5. Create a Written Agreed Disaster Recovery Plan
Not planning what you will do in each situation is recognized as poor planning in 2019. The stress that an attack will create will affect each person differently. Often companies benefit from having a step by step plan in place so that the thinking is done ahead of time.
Workers simply have to follow an instruction manual instead of thinking creatively on the spot. This also benefits other members of the team who are able to predict what their coworker’s actions will be. A clear instruction manual will also help the team members avoid tasks being performed twice unnecessarily.
6. Thoroughly Test Your Recovery Plan
The theory may be sound, however, in practice restoring your system can always be unpredictable.
Companies should perform multiple tests before finalizing it. There are always more things that an IT team can do to make the restoration process faster or more efficient. Further, this should be done regularly as software versions change or new programs are adopted by the company.
7. Plan Your Back-Up Resources Ahead of Time
One of the crucial stages in restoring productivity is protecting and restoring data. If your main concern is ransomware, you will need to consider adding multiple layers of protection to your data.
If you will need to replace hardware, you can have spare hardware available that can be patched in at a moment’s notice. You should also maintain good records and the tools needed to install any needed hardware.
8. Maintain Good Software Records
Depending on the size of your company you may have software delivery programs that will automatically update your user’s machines. If you do not, you will need to maintain accurate records of your software.
This is especially important if you use in-house or proprietary software that interacts with professional software. It is important to ensure that you re-install the correct version of the software so that it talks successfully with your in-house software.
9. Retain Information Regarding Your Network Infrastructure
If a disaster calls for you to replace physical parts of your system, an accurate map of your network infrastructure can save you hours. It will help you to quickly identify each input and output on your switch and panels.
This should also include considerations regarding how your network is powered and whether UPS (Uninterrupted power supplies) have redundancies.
10. Consider Virtual Machines
If getting multiple users up and running is the priority in your case, you may be able to benefit from running virtual machines.
They can offer a faster recovery solution than physical machines. They can also reboot from a particular reboot date.
Disaster Recovery Plan Steps and Much more
Planning for the worst and forming disaster recovery plan steps is an important part of future-proofing your business. Cyber attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated and attacks on businesses are becoming more common.
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