1. Secure support from senior management 2. Conduct a risk assessment (impact analysis) 3. Assign priorities to operations
4. Explore all options and strategies
5. Collect data 6. Create a comprehensive written plan
7. Develop test procedures 8. Test the plan
9. Signoff from senior management
There are nine important steps to create a disaster recovery plan.
• Secure support from senior management. A successful disaster recovery plan requires funding, coordination across departments, and the authority to carry out the plan.
• Conduct a risk assessment. Prepare a business impact analysis that covers a range of potential disasters. Analyze major business units and attempt to determine the impact of different disaster scenarios. Assign cost estimates to each disaster scenario.
• Classify and assign priorities to operations and data. This will allow the company to make an informed decision regarding the acceptable amount of downtime for each application. It is not cost-effective to guarantee 100 percent uptime for every resource.