The DRP also known as Disaster Recovery Plan is basically the set of protocols which are usually followed by businesses and companies to simply protect the assets and information in an event of any kind of disaster or mishap. The outline of the Disaster Recovery Management plan is basically as comprehensive document or in other words the statement of particular actions which are to be mentioned well in place before the disaster, during the disaster and also after the disaster. The catastrophe or may be of any kind of the dimension and it may also fall in three key categories, such as, environmental, man-made and natural. However, the Intentional man-made disasters mainly relate to the terrorism and violence; unintentional that usually relates to the accidents such as break-up or even the breach of dam, building of the break-down etc.
Through the increasing dependency on the IT for running the operation of the business, more companies are now devising for the Disaster Prevention and the Disaster Recovery Plans.
Key Objectives followed by DRP!
The fact is that Disasters cannot usually be completely avoided however, with the subsequent effects it may also be minimized drastically with the careful planning as well as foreseeing different sets of consequences. The key objective of the DRP is about protection of company's functions in an event of complete or partial failure.
While talking about the natural disasters, the DRP works on Flood Damage Restoration, fire damage restoration and other different kinds of restoration and recovery plan caused by natural disaster. However, here it may also refer to IT end which allows the running of various networks and systems relating to key areas of business and the data storage. Hence, two-fold aspects of the DRP, in such kind of the scenario where entire network and systems fail, are:
- Minimizing the downtime of business
- Minimizing the loss of data
The DRP mainly aims in minimizing the disruption which is caused by disaster, it also ensures the level of stability as well as level recovery which might be also mentioned in a place that is subsequent to the disaster. The main aspects that are mentioned above may even be gauged in regard to key two concepts such as RPO which means Recovery Point Objective and RTO which means Recovery Time Objective.
Here, you need to know that RPO is generally measured from time of happening of disaster or major incident - hence the RPO begins 'backward in time' along as there is maximum acceptable level of volume of loss of data and information which may also be measured well in time. It also means age of data or file or record in back-up storage which requires to be pulled out and recovered for resuming the normal functions of business again.
On the other hand, RTO is basically the time measure in which the business or the company should restore their function in such a way so the consequences that are arising out of the break in the continuity of the business are avoided.