Disaster Recovery (DR)

No one likes to think about the worst things happening to their business but planning for it is essential.

Onward has helped hundreds of firms plan for the worst and recover from real-life disasters.

Our Disaster Recovery experts have conducted planning, test, and actual failovers and restorations from every disaster scenario, and we work with leading industry Disaster Recovery providers like StorageCraft, Datto, and Axcient to provide peace of mind and restoration capability in case the worst happens.

Declare a Disaster: Before any organization can make a successful disaster recovery plan, you first need to define what a disaster means for your business. At the most basic level, companies need to list and define major disruptions to their business – This could be anything from an office fire or break-in to a major regional disruption like a hurricane or terrorist attack. Once you define disasters and how you will recognize them, you will know which parts of the disaster recovery plan to implement, and when. You must also decide who needs to be notified in such an event as well as how and when they will be contacted.

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CREATE A PLAN

Whether your business is in logistics, manufacturing, legal, non-profit or financial services, for a successful Disaster Recovery strategy, you need to:

NBack up and recover any application, data, or server
NProvide on-premise and cloud backup options
NHave flexible backup options to meet your Recovery Point Objective
NRetain Rapid Failover in a disaster to meet Recovery Time Objective
NRun frequent verification of backup files and tests of the recovery system.
NEncrypt backups to protect against ransomware and other cyber threats

Categorize and Prioritize Data and Systems

A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is a systematic process that helps you evaluate the potential effects of an interruption to critical business operations as a result of a disaster, accident or emergency. A BIA is an essential component of an organization’s business continuity plan; it includes an exploratory component to reveal any vulnerabilities and a planning component to develop strategies for minimizing risk. Our DR strategists can conduct a BIA that uncovers and describes the potential risks specific to your business. As part of your custom DR plan, these reports help you to identify the most common threats and help you prioritize them.

We help you address today’s most prevalent threats such as:

NRansomware
NInsider threats
NTerrorism
NLoss of critical infrastructure
NPandemic/Public Health and Safety

Testing Your DR Plan

The most important step in a Disaster Recovery planning exercise is testing. After many years of DR planning, we always tell our clients that the only way to know if your Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective are set properly is conducting a full DR plan test. We prefer to learn this under a controlled DR test rather than during a real disaster.

Onward DR team can help you facilitate, execute, and assess a full- or partial-failover disaster recovery test for any backup solution before or after a DR planning engagement.