When did you last review your disaster recovery plan?

Many companies only realize the proverbial day after that this disaster recovery plan is totally outdated or doesn't work, in the worst case it doesn't even exist.

What is a disaster recovery plan and what is it good for?

The disaster recovery plan shows what needs to be done in the event of a fault to get the IT system, production process and warehouse logistics up and running again. Ideally, this should not only be considered when the error occurs, but at regular intervals. Test this plan continuously and adapt it to changes.

A regular controlled backup is not sufficient for the disaster recovery plan, and how dependent some companies are on their systems only becomes apparent in the event of a failure. It is not uncommon to find a forgotten old Windows 95 PC in a critical production system.

What can happen? Cases from 25 years of IT experience:

• A technician uses an angle grinder to cut the fiber optic cable to the production hall, causing production to be shut down for several days.
• The documentation of the IT system is on the file server, whose backup could not be restored because the passwords were stored on the file server.
• An incorrectly connected network cable paralyzed an industrial company for several hours, while a severed cable had the same effect in another company.
• Missing backups of the central virtual management consoles lead to endless unnecessary searches for VMs in the event of an error
• Central services such as DHCP, DNS, ADS only run as a single point of failure.
• Incorrectly wired UPS caused blackout
• ....

It is better to think things through in advance and test according to a plan than just react in the event of an error.

The GDPR also obliges you to regularly check your technical and organizational measures, use this obligation to check your DRP to be prepared in the event of an error.