Cybersecurity: Disaster Recovery Plan
Cybersecurity problems are becoming a regular challenge for businesses. Recent trends and figures on cybersecurity show a significant rise in hacked and compromised data from sources that are very common in the workplace.
As said “Prevention is better than Cure”, although it is an ideal solution, it is neither simple nor easy to avoid a data breach.
Hackers have proved that with enough time commitment & motivation, they can go to any extent to gather information stored on secured servers. Why wouldn’t they? Statistics show that they are highly motivated by money to acquire data, and any type of information to breach is a huge win for them. This is further proved by the report on the data breach.
We’re only halfway through this year and according to sources, 16 billion records have been exposed so far this year with half of them exposed in the first quarter itself.
Being prepared to deal with such scenarios is the only way forward. But how?
Back it up!
We have heard it a lot of times that always back up what you’re working on. Let it be IT, security or dealing with systems and data. Back it up! Make a copy in case anything goes left. But how do we backup? Or is backing up the data will solve the problem? It does sound simple, but It is not.
Backing up the data and restoring it must be done by professionals, the one who have expertise in doing so. They should be able to pay attention to every part of the process.
What if someone attacks the system with ransomware? Rather than paying for the data, which was already yours, just switch to a backup. Backup is a part of the strategy for protection against attacks. But having backup won’t solve the problem alone.
Have you tested your backups?
Do you remember the last time you tested your backups? Do you have the updated copies? Do they work? These questions can be simply answered if we frequently check and validate the authenticity of the backup.
Do you have a Disaster Recovery Plan?
What to do after it happens? There should always be a crisis management plan to act on the problem. This should involve everyone in the organization to act on the recovery roadmap as soon as it is initiated.
This should involve:
- Educate everyone in an organization about the recovery plan process.
- Involve all the departments and train them on how to communicate with the clients and the vendors accordingly.
Is your plan error-free?
Let’s answer the million-dollar question Is your plan full proof! A party or a person who was involved in creating the plan may think that everything is perfect. Just like creating a plan. A person who created it may have overlooked their mistakes. Therefore, there should be an audit by a team who were not involved in the creation process of the plan but holds expertise in doing so.
What is the recovery time?
One needs to ensure that the average recovery time to restore the backup should be as less as possible. This will help in minimizing the losses and ensuring that business operations are at the level as required. Proper planning helps ensure your backups are available as in when required, and recovery processes can meet the required objectives accordingly.
Update Your Recovery Plan
Having a plan is one thing but one needs to frequently update it. This can be achieved by simulating a situation like a disaster and following the plan of action. This would help in identifying the weaknesses and the sections which are outdated to the current industry standards.
Sadly, incidents do happen even though if you try to prevent them. If a disaster happens, make sure your organization is ready and can recover as quickly as possible. Make sure your organization have backups and systems that can recover the on-going critical business processes in time.
The above blog is one of the many steps taken by our team at AFour Technologies towards our continuous efforts of educating businesses about various security threats. If this is something you or your business is also concerned about, our security experts would love to have a conversation with you.
