Welcome to the First Column IT Tech Blog

HomeBlog
How to Develop a Reliable Business Disaster Recovery Plan

How to Develop a Reliable Business Disaster Recovery Plan

June 30, 2022

In today’s digital world, we rely on our business technology more than ever. That’s why you should be doing everything you can to protect your data and technology. In order for your business to stay protected, you need a disaster recovery plan.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, one in five businesses doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan. That means that 20% of businesses would struggle to recover if they experienced a disaster. These disasters can range from storms and earthquakes to cyberattacks, network outages and human error. That’s why it’s so important that you have a plan in place for these scenarios.  

Let’s discuss a few ways to prevent a disaster from impacting your business.  

Four Simple Steps to Creating Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Step 1: Run a Business Impact Analysis

Run a business impact analysis on your current processes. This analysis is perfect for finding any gaps in your business. That way, when you see those vulnerabilities, you can get the information you need to create a disaster recovery strategy.  

Step 2: Identify Your Critical Business Functions

Based on the results of your analysis, your next step should be to identify and document your critical business functions. With your analysis, you should now be able to see how your business would fare if it were hit by a disaster. From there, you can identify what parts of your business processes need to be improved.  

Step 3: Begin Developing Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Now is when you start developing your disaster recovery plan. For your plan to be successful, you should organize your recovery teams, create points of contact in the event of a disaster, write the procedures needed in the event of a disaster and communicate these procedures with your entire team.  

Step 4: Test Your Plan & Train Your Team

Finally, test how your disaster recovery plan works. Testing your plan with mock scenarios is crucial to make sure that everything is solid with no gaps. Once that’s figured out, it’s important that your team is trained on these procedures so that they’re also prepared if a disaster strikes.

Final Thoughts

A solid disaster recovery plan can give you peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and secure.  

There can be many challenges to developing your own plan, and it can be a extremely time-consuming task. That’s where we come in — our experts can assess your IT infrastructure, identify vulnerabilities, address the gaps, develop a disaster recovery plan and test that plan for you. At First Column IT, our IT experts are ready to help you develop a plan to keep your business data safe and backed up.  

Looking to learn more about disaster recovery and other cyber tips? Check out more of our blogs in our resources section.

Previous Post
September 12, 2025
How to Calculate Your Next IT Project’s ROI
Depending on the sector your business falls into, you’ll want to implement technology solutions designed to help you be successful in the context of that sector. Part of that means investing in new solutions that can yield a satisfactory return on investment, or ROI. But how do you know if a solution can yield a good ROI, and most important of all, what kind of math goes into ensuring you’re not overspending on IT that doesn’t produce results?
September 10, 2025
Don't Let AI Tank Your Customer Relationships
AI is a game-changer, there's no doubt about it. From the value your business gets from streamlining operations to its powerful information retrieval, it’s changed, in a very short amount of time, how knowledge-based businesses operate. If you're thinking of handing over your entire customer support operation to an AI, however, you need to pump the brakes a bit. While AI offers incredible efficiencies, completely removing the human element could be a problem for your business.
September 8, 2025
3 Ways You Can Use Excel Effectively
Some of the most versatile and useful technology out there might already be installed on your infrastructure. One such tool is Microsoft Excel, Microsoft 365’s spreadsheet building platform. You might be surprised to find out that Excel can be used in some interesting ways—including these three uses.

Have a project in mind?

Start with our free consultation. We will provide a detailed proposal and firm quote based on your specific IT support needs. All at a predictable monthly cost per seat.
Free Consultation - Sign Up Here