The Consonus Disaster Recovery Preparedness Continuum

You’ve Taken the First Step

You are actively thinking about how to better manage your business against risk.

You’re Off to a Good Start
You’ve begun the work necessary to develop a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan.

Good news!

You’re well on your way toward making your Disaster Recovery Plan complete.

Congratulations!

You have a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan, and are better prepared for a disaster than most of your peers.

Do you know that 2 of 5 companies that experience a catastrophic event or prolonged outage never resume operations? Of those that do, 1 in 3 goes out of business within two years!†

If you’re concerned about costs linked to failures such as loss of revenue, replacement of equipment, and salaries associated with work backlogs, then you should

• Identify critical business processes and IT services

• Determine the business case and requirements for continuity

• Identify potential disaster scenarios and assess risk 

As a first step, Consonus recommends an introductory meeting with our Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity experts. We will assess your unique business requirements and recommend an action plan that will help you mitigate these business risks.

†According to Gartner

Emerging firms have Disaster Recovery Plans that may have:

• Identified the quantitative and qualitative costs of downtime 

• Established Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and the IT infrastructure necessary to achieve them

• Selected and prepared a data center facility for recovery

• Planned for data recovery, but have not yet verified the ability to meet RTOs 

As a next step, Consonus recommends a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Gap Assessment to identify and prioritize areas that need improvement, such as:

• a thoroughly audited backup, replication, and offsite rotation plan that has been proven to meet RTOs and RPOs

• a comprehensive plan for provisioning servers, storage and networks in a timeframe necessary to meet RTOs

Firms in the Advanced phase have Disaster Recovery Plans that may include elements such as:

• Clearly defined Disaster Recovery Roles and Responsibilities

• A Disaster Recovery Communication Plan that details procedures for the activation of the Recovery Team

• Detailed Data Recovery Procedures

• Validation of technical and personnel readiness

As a next step, Consonus recommends a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Gap Assessment to further benchmark your current capabilities against Best Practices.

World Class firms have addressed and prioritized many of the elements of a Disaster Recovery Plan, including:

• Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) with Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

• Testing and verification of technical recovery capabilities at least twice per year, and team preparedness exercises at least annually

• A comprehensive plan for providing end users access to systems, irrespective of how physical facilities or networks may be impacted by disaster

Be sure that you are always aware of opportunities for improvement. Consonus continually monitors new developments and Best Practices – and we welcome the opportunity to help improve your capabilities and control your costs.