We all know that data is king when it comes to business continuity and disaster recovery. Metric reporting is one of the few ways to truly know that what you're doing works, but it's a huge challenge for many business continuity and disaster recovery managers. If you don't have an automated tool, you're probably collecting BC/DR metrics with Word, Excel, and colleagues from other departments. We've all had the experience of dealing with Kyle from finance, who is "way too busy" for your "minor" business continuity project.
So, what should a BC/DR manager do? You are already aware that BC/DR is an important component of an organization's success. And you are aware that metrics are required to assess the effectiveness of your efforts. The first step is to understand the metrics that are important in business continuity and disaster recovery planning, which will be covered in this guide. You will also require a tool for collecting and reporting on these metrics. This could range from an Excel template to powerful, automated software, depending on the size of your organization and the maturity level of your BC/DR program.
Important BC/DR Metrics
There are 7 important BC/DR metrics that you should be tracking to grow and measure recovery plans:
- Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)
- Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
- The number of plans that cover each critical business process
- The amount of time since each plan was updated
- The number of businesses processes that are threatened by a potential disaster
- The actual time it takes to recover a business process
- The difference between your target and actual recovery time
While there are several other metrics that you could track, these metrics serve as a core review of your program, and indicate how prepared you are for a real disaster.
Critical Metrics in BC/DR
Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) are the first two critical BC/DR metrics. RTOs are the maximum acceptable time that an item can be down. RPOs determine how old the data is that you can afford to lose and whether or not your backups will save the rest. If you can afford to lose an hour's worth of data, for example, you'll need to run backups at least every hour.
Backup and recovery procedures are at the heart of a good BC/DR plan, so you must consider both RTOs and RPOs when selecting backup and recovery tools. How many minutes worth of transactions could you afford to lose if you generate continuous transactions at a moderate-to-high volume and value? How long could you afford to be out of commission? Such an application could benefit from the very frequent, block-level backups enabled by Continuous Data Protection (CDP), but you wouldn't know unless you examined both the RTOs and RPOs.
Finally, you should measure the number of plans that cover each business process, as well as the amount of time since each plan was updated. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a measure of how well a program works and one that you can’t ignore. You can set KPIs for how often you review and update your plans (for example, every month, 6 months or year) and how many business functions are covered by a recovery plan, with an action plan to achieve 100% coverage. If you are limited on time and resources, start with your most critical business processes.
Best Practices for Clean BC/DR Data
The data collected by your BC/DR software must be "clean" in order to produce accurate reports and planning. Standardize data input with drop down menus, pick lists, text formatting, and data validation for good data hygiene. For example, if you're entering employee phone numbers into a plan, you'll want to ensure that they include an area code and are still in use.
Deduplication and Identity and Access Management (IAM) can aid in the cultivation of beautiful data. Deduplication can be used to eliminate multiple occurrences of the same entry. Credentials (authentication) and permissions (authorization) can be used together to ensure that only qualified users enter vital records and data. You'll also save time and headaches by integrating your BC/DR system with other applications (for example, your HR system) to avoid record duplication and errors.
Where to Start
We live in a world where disasters occur and businesses either suffer or perish. BC/DR is critical to an organization's success and resilience, and it is your responsibility to keep the business running and your employees safe in an emergency... but you already knew that.
With the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can only sleep soundly at night if you rely on data.
By making it to the end of this guide, you've made a great start to BC/DR planning, but now it's time to put your knowledge into action! Begin by using a relationship modeling tool to identify your critical business functions and how they are interdependent.
Next, using RTO and RPO metrics, determine an acceptable downtime threshold. Test your plans to see if they meet or exceed the thresholds. If you do, revise your plans and retest them. Set KPIs to track how frequently your plans are updated and tested, and perform a gap analysis to compare planned vs. actual recovery time.
BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) plan stands as an important part of business due to its capability for giving stable business operations guarantees even after a disaster. Organizations should make an overall evaluation of the current state of business regularly to update or re-schedule the existing BCDR plan for secure, high-quality service delivery.
You can use file recovery software to setup a BCDR architecture from the IT side at ease with a set of VM backup and disaster recovery features. The 60-Day free full-featured trial is available to download.
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