Various disasters both, natural and human-induced, can cause disruptions to an organization’s operations. As such, it is important to develop a disaster recovery plan that facilitates the resumption of operations whenever interruptions occur due to calamities (Caroll, n.d.). For example, among the disasters that can affect a company, floods and large-scale power outages are some of the disasters that can affect a business organization. Consequently, a disaster recovery plan must contain steps to respond to such problems and should be adapted to accommodate the needs of the different responses.
For instance, in the case of flooding, the main issue of concern involves workers accessing the office and protecting valuable company property from water damage. Therefore, a disaster recovery response plan ought to address the issue of accessibility and water damage. The problem of accessibility may be solved by requesting workers to operate remotely. In this regard, employees can work from home while the problem of flooding is being resolved. In addition, water damage is prevented using backups and secure storage. The valuable items must be stored in a secure, waterproof location and a backup of the data should also be available in a different location. Both strategies are useful in helping a company to resume operations after experiencing an interruption.
In contrast, a large-scale power outage may require a different disaster recovery plan because it presents different problems. Unlike floods, which cause inaccessibility and water damage, power outages halt the company operations by preventing access to electronic devices. Lack of power results in major disruptions to such activities and an organization should respond as fast as possible to resume operations. The use of secondary data centers would be helpful whereby people can be relocated to the new site in the short term. Thus, warm or cold sites can be used for disaster recovery in case of power outages.
Disaster recovery plans are an important aspect of business continuity. Different calamities cause different damages, which result in the need for varying responses. Flooding causes inaccessibility to the company and large-scale power outages result in a lack of access to electronic devices. Both disasters require different strategies to mitigate the damage they cause to the organization. Flooding can be mitigated by remote working while power outages may involve the use of warm or cold sites. Each strategy accommodates the needs of an organization depending on the cause of the disruption.
Reference
Caroll, A. (n.d). How effective is your data center’s disaster recovery plan? Lifeline Data Centers. Web.