Lots and lots of businesses are known to be bad at either implementing a disaster recovery plan in the first place or updating and revising that plan on a regular basis to make sure it’s still fit for purpose.

Why? Well often it’s not prioritised and people don’t like change but the trouble is, if your disaster recovery plan isn’t effective then you’re doing more than just flirting with disaster, you’re asking for trouble!

In this blog we’ll review some of the most popular myths about disaster recovery planning that are typically causing businesses to avoid implementing or updating their key business strategies. Here we go…

Myth number one

Disaster recovery planning is expensive and relies on lots of resources.

This may have been the case once upon a time, but now as technologies continue to advance and improve and things like virtualisation and automation are on the increase, the costs associated with disaster recovery continue to fall. This is because these advances have reduced the man power needed to restore systems, therefore reducing staffing costs and virtualisation in particular has limited the initial capital investment because less physical infrastructure is required.

Myth number two

A disaster recovery plan is only useful for major events like fires and floods, earthquakes and tsunamis.

Erm, wrong actually. For most businesses, it’s not going to be this kind of disaster that’ll take down key business IT, it’ll be something much smaller like hardware failures, human error or power outages. A less dramatic cause but the same kind of disastrous effect. That’s why the best disaster recovery strategies tackle overall service continuity, addresses common causes of service disruption as well as less predictable and less common events.

Myth number three

We don’t need a disaster recovery plan because we have data backups in place.

Nice try, but data backups are just one small part of a full disaster recovery plan. Don’t forget, your business is only likely to run backups at certain intervals too, so what happens if a disaster strikes between the backups being made?

Myth number four

Disaster recovery is the responsibility of our cloud services provider or managed services provider.

Hmmm maybe. For one thing this assumes that you actually have these types of providers in place to start with but if you do, you will still need to check your agreement or contracts with them to see if disaster recovery planning is included in what they do for you. You should not assume that this type of service simple comes as standard.

Myth number five

Disaster recovery plans are separate to maintaining day to day operations.

Wrong again. Just like we said above, the best disaster recovery plans are all encompassing, so they should cover how to recover your data after a flood but they should also have a plan in place for how to get the business back up and running when there’s a simple power outage or hardware failure. A key aspect of this is communicating the disaster recovery plan with all members of your business, so when disaster strikes, however small and whatever the cause, your team know what to do next and can react in a timely and efficient way. This can be the difference between achieving or missing your Recovery Time Objectives.

Myth number six

You can’t accurately test your disaster recovery plan once it has been created.

Again, before virtualisation this may have been true, but with virtualisation, disaster recovery plans can be tested again significant failures, repeatedly, to make sure the plan is consistently effective. Not only that, this kind of testing can also be done without disruption day to day business operations.

Myth number seven

Disaster recovery plans are a waste of money because they never get used.

Well not necessarily. Like car insurance when you’ve never had an accident, many businesses believe disaster recovery planning is a waste money if you never actually have a disaster but in actual fact, you can see a return on your investment in disaster recovery planning without suffering a catastrophe. For many businesses, this kind of plan is ideal as a migration strategy for switching data centres and IT providers. In some cases, having a plan in place may also be a compliance requirement and failing that you have to admit, having the peace of mind that should he worst happen, you know what to do has to be worth something?

If you’re concerned about your business’s disaster recovery planning, talk to one of our experts today to find out how we can help.