Your free disaster

recovery plan template

Bad things happen – it’s obvious to say, but it is a universal truism. Indeed,
whether in business or your personal life, things will not always run
smoothly.

Yet, we all take risks. We start businesses, engage with customers and
accept the risk and responsibility that entails. Why? Because when you
can anticipate a potential risk, you can plan against it.

Did you know that in the last 12 months 77 percent of organisations

experienced at least one IT outage? Did you also know that of these
organisations 27 percent lost money as a result?

Are you willing to risk being part of that statistic? Or do you want to
do something about it?

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Why your business needs a disaster
recovery plan

To mitigate the risks that downtime can pose, your business needs a
disaster recovery plan. This is why 95 percent of businesses have one. But
just because others have one, it doesn’t mean they’re all created equal.

Here are the main reasons why your business needs an effective disaster
recovery plan that covers all bases.

Valuable data can be lost or stolen

These days, data is valuable and abundant. With smartphones and the internet
involved in almost every aspect of our lives, nearly everything you do creates a
digital trace. Whether it’s your customer records, financial information or details
of your internal IP, your data is gold dust for would-be hackers. That puts your
business at risk.

If that doesn’t convince you, estimates suggest that there are 65,000 attempted
cyberattacks on UK businesses each day. Do you think there would be that
many if your business data was not valuable?

You can’t afford to lose such precious information. If the worst were to happen,
you need to know you can recover your data at any time.

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Downtime is expensive

Time is money. Downtime is not only wasted potential, but it actively costs your
business. According to a recent survey, organisations who suffered downtime
incurred costs of between £10,000 and more than £1 million per hour.

Naturally, you’ll know the costs and opportunity you’d lose if business was
suddenly to cease. If you want to avoid this scenario, you need a disaster
recovery plan to get your business back on its feet as soon as possible.

Your business lacks resiliency

If you were hit with a devastating cyberattack or systems failure, you could lose
everything. But with a solid plan for recovering your assets, you can ensure
your business survives any disaster. In fact, 96 percent of companies with a
disaster recovery plan in place survive attacks such as ransomware.

Customers demand perfection

Customers don’t care about your problems. Approximately 24 percent of

customers say they would stop engaging with a business after just one
bad experience. At the end of the day, you can either cater to their needs
or you can’t. If it’s the latter, don’t be surprised when they go to one of your
competitors.

With an effective disaster recovery plan, you can ensure downtime and
customer inconvenience is kept to a minimum.

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Your free disaster recovery plan
template

So, now you know why a disaster recovery plan makes good business
sense. But do you know how to start creating one? If the answer’s no, don’t
worry – we’ve done most of the hard work for you.

Using the template below, you can create a disaster recovery plan that will
ensure that everyone in your business is reading from the same page.

Information technology statement of intent

This document outlines

[COMPANY NAME]'S policies and procedures
for technology disaster recovery. It also documents our process level plans for
recovering critical technology platforms.

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Policy statement

•
[COMPANY NAME] shall develop a comprehensive IT disaster
recovery plan

• A formal risk assessment shall be undertaken to determine the

requirements for the plan.

• The plan will cover all essential and critical IT elements, systems and
networks in accordance with key business activities.

• This plan must be tested periodically in a simulated environment to ensure

it can be fully and effectively implemented in an emergency. This must
also be done to ensure management and staff understand how it will be
executed.

• All staff members must be made aware of this plan and their own respective
roles in carrying it out.

• This disaster recovery plan must be kept up to date by

[DEPARTMENT/NAME]
to take changing circumstances into account.

Objectives

The principal objective is to develop, test and document a well-structured

and easily understood plan which will help the company recover as quickly
and effectively as possible from an unforeseen disaster or emergency which
interrupts information systems and business operations.

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Disaster recovery team contact information

These are the parties who will be contacted, in this order, in an emergency that
disrupts business operations.

Telephone
Department Contact Name Email
Number

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External Contacts

These are the parties who will be contacted in an emergency that disrupts
business operations. Call the relevant person who can discover and fix the
cause of disruption.

This table should include external contactors such as your building

management, utilities provider, telecoms provider, insurance provider etc.

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 Telephone
Department Contact Name Email
Number

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1. Plan overview

Plan updating

[SCHEDULE]
This plan will be updated by
[DEPARTMENT/NAME] .
They are responsible for ensuring the plan is up to date and effective.

[SCHEDULE]
The plan will be tested every . All employees of
[COMPANY NAME] will be made aware of this test [SCHEDULE]
before it takes place.

Plan documentation storage

Copies of this plan will be stored digitally in

[STORAGE]
and physically in .
[STORAGE]

Backup strategy
[SCHEDULE]
Backups of the plan will be made every by
[DEPARTMENT/NAME]
. The backup will be stored digitally in
[STORAGE]
. Each time a backup takes place
[DEPARTMENT/NAME]
will review the plan to ensure it is up to date.

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Risk Management
Brief Description
Potential Disas- Probability Impact
of Potential
ter Rating Rating Consequences & Remedial Actions

Flood

Fire

Act of Terrorism

Act of Sabotage

Electrical Power
Failure

Loss of
communications
network services

Probability: 1 = Very High, 5 = Very Low Impact: 1 = Total destruction, 5 = Minor annoyance

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2. Emergency Response

Discovery, escalation and plan invocation

Upon discovery of business disruption, the Disaster Recovery Team (DRT) will
be contacted as soon as possible. They will then assess the situation and react
according to agreed internal plans.

Assembly points

In the event of a situation which represents a danger to staff members and/or

the working premises, we will evacuate. This will be orchestrated by heads of
each department. Everyone will meet at the following assembly points:

Department Assembly Point

Emergency Alert Team

All department heads are in the Emergency Alert Team. Upon discovery of
an emergency situation all members of staff will report to their departmental
superior as soon as possible. If they are the most senior department member, it
is their responsibility to contact the Disaster Recovery Team (see above).

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Contact with Employees

All managers will serve as the focal point for employee questions and
comments within their own departments.

Alternate Recovery Facilities

If possible, the alternate recovery facilities and back-ups will be activated.

Please see below the steps required to achieve this:

Recovery plan for mobile site

1. Notify the Disaster Recovery Team of the nature of the disaster and the
need to select the mobile site plan.
2. Confirm in writing the substance of the telephone notification to the Disaster
Recovery Team within 48 hours of the telephone notification.
3. Confirm all needed backup media are available to load the backup machine.
4. Prepare a purchase order to cover the use of backup equipment.
5. Notify ____________ of plans for a trailer and its placement (on
____________ side of ____________).
6. Depending on communication needs, notify telephone company
(____________) of possible emergency line changes.
7. Begin setting up power and communications at ____________.
8. Power and communications are prearranged to hook into when trailer
arrives.
9. At the point where telephone lines come into the building (____________),
break the current linkage to the administration controllers (____________).
These lines are rerouted to lines going to the mobile site. They are linked to
modems at the mobile site.

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10. The lines currently going from ____________ to ____________ would then
be linked to the mobile unit via modems.
11. This can conceivably require ____________ to redirect lines at
____________ complex to a more secure area in case of disaster.
12. When the trailer arrives, plug into power and do necessary checks.
13. Plug into the communications lines and do necessary checks.
14. Begin loading system from backups.
15. Begin normal operations as soon as possible:
16. Daily jobs
17. Daily saves
18. Weekly saves
19. Plan a schedule to back up the system in order to restore on a home-base
computer when a site is available. (Use regular system backup procedures).
20. Secure mobile site and distribute keys as required.
21. Keep a maintenance log on mobile equipment.

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Recovery plan for hot site

An alternate hot site plan should provide for an alternative (backup) site. The
alternate site has a backup system for temporary use while the home site is
being re-established.

1. Notify ____________ of the nature of the disaster and of its desire for a hot
site.
2. Request air shipment of modems to ____________ for communications.
(See ____________ for communications for the hot site.)
3. Confirm in writing the telephone notification to ____________ within 48
hours of the telephone notification.
4. Begin making necessary travel arrangements to the site for the operations
team.
5. Confirm that you have enough save media and that it is packed for
shipment to restore on the backup system.
6. Prepare a purchase order to cover the use of the backup system.
7. Review the checklist for all necessary materials before departing to the hot
site.
8. Make sure that the disaster recovery team at the disaster site has the
necessary information to begin restoring the site.
9. Provide for travel expenses (cash advance).
10. After arriving at the hot site, contact home base to establish
communications procedures.
11. Review materials brought to the hot site for completeness.
12. Start to load the system from the save media.
13. Begin normal operations as soon as possible:
• Daily jobs
• Daily saves
• Weekly saves
14. Plan the schedule to back up the hot-site system in order to restore on the
home-base computer.

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Recovery plan for entire system

This is specific to your own system requirements and needs. Fill in the table
below to detail the recovery plan in the event of a full system shutdown:

Personnel and Family Notification

In case of hospitalisation of any staff member, management will have access to

medical contact records to notify any chosen next of kin. These contact details
are located can be found at the following locations.

Digital Copies Physical Copies

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3. Media

Media Contact

Only assigned staff may coordinate with the media. The approved staff are as
follows.

Department Approved for Media Contact

Media strategy

Media contacts will endeavour

to avoid adverse publicity and
to answer questions without
giving away confidential
information.

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4. Insurance

[INSERT RELEVANT INSURANCE POLICIES HERE. INCLUDE POLICIES

REGARDING ERRORS AND OMISSIONS, DIRECTORS & OFFICERS
LIABILITY, GENERAL LIABILITY AND BUSINESS INTERRUPTION
INSURANCE]

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5. Financial and Legal Issues
[COMPANY NAME]
In an emergency, will assess any financial or legal
ramifications, actual or potential, that may arise.

Financial Assessment

Once resolved, there will be an initial assessment of the impact of the incident
on the financial affairs of the company. This will be carried out by the parties
listed below.

Name Company/ Department Internal/External

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Financial Requirements

Financial staff members, either employed or outsourced by

[COMPANY NAME]
shall compile a report of the financial position of the business. This will include,
but not be limited to, information on:

• Cash flow position

• Upcoming liabilities and payments (E.g. tax, interest, subscriptions)
• Temporary borrowing capacity
• The state and current value of business capital
• Anything else that is appropriate and relevant in the aftermath of the
emergency incident

Legal Actions
[COMPANY NAME]
Legal staff members either employed or outsourced by
shall compile a report of the potential legal ramifications of the incident. This
includes, but is not limited to, the possibility of any and all legal claims by or
against [COMPANY
. NAME]

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It’s not about getting knocked down.
It’s about how you get back up

Lack of sufficient planning and tools can pose a real threat to the effectiveness
of your disaster recovery solution. While this disaster recovery plan will help
you prepare for the worst, we also hope you never have to use it.

In our experience, there are two main solutions for disaster recovery,
depending on where your data lives:

• On-premise Disaster Recovery: we recommend StorageCraft. They use

a Network Attached Storage Device to recover your systems an get your
business back on its feet as soon as possible.

• Cloud-based Disaster Recovery: we recommend Microsoft Azure Site

Recovery. This replicates your infrastructure to a separate, geo-redundant
cloud environment, limiting any damage an emergency incident might
cause.

Whichever solution you choose, reviewing and updating your disaster recovery
plan on a regular basis, will help you gain the most benefits.

To discover more, check out our disaster recovery services page and start
protecting your IT systems today.

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