# Disaster Recovery Planning: A Checklist

Source: https://expedient.com/knowledgebase/blog/2014-04-10-disaster-recovery-planning-checklist/

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# Disaster Recovery Planning: A Checklist

April 10, 2014 3 min Read

## Your Disaster Recovery Toolkit: Network Availability Basics

**Question:** If a disaster were to affect your IT infrastructure, how long could your business survive?

**Answer:** Unless you actively test your disaster recovery plan, chances are you will be out of business within one year. Take note: less than 50% of U.S. corporations actively engage in the testing of their disaster recovery plans.

#### Evaluating Your Disaster Recovery Plan:

To ensure the protection of your business critical data and the continuous availability of your network, it’s imperative that you evaluate the scalability, testing and risk impact of your current [disaster recovery plan](https://www.expedient.com/services/disaster-recovery/ "Disaster Recovery as a Service"):

**Scalability:** Not every disaster happens on a large scale. In fact, more than 50% of system failures are attributed to localized power outages or IT failures – not a major disaster. To ensure a wide net of protection, your disaster recovery plan needs to account for disasters of varying scales.

**Testing:** Your infrastructure, as well as threats to your infrastructure, will continue to evolve at a lightning pace. (For instance, a recent merger acquisition may have added an extra layer of complexity to data recovery). This is why testing—both planned and surprised—needs to take place on a routine basis. While this may put a drain on internal resources initially,think of every test as an opportunity to discover, strengthen and eliminate weaknesses. With this in mind, your disaster testing should:

- Occur once every six months—at minimum
- Encompass your entire infrastructure, including data and application stored off-site
- Offer insights for updates and enhancements

**Risk Impact Analysis:** As your business grows, evolves and changes, so will the risks. For this reason, it is advisable to create a risk impact analysis report, one that you will update every time you conduct your business continuity tests. Remember, risk analysis should include calculating the actual costs of downtime:

- Loss of sales orders
- Impact on invoicing and reduced cash flow
- Negative impact on the quality of customer service
- Missed deadlines
- Idle or underproductive employees
- Need for additional human resources

Of course, the best solution is to not just prepare for this downtime, but to prevent it. This is where Expedient can help. [Visit one of our data centers today](https://www.expedient.com/data-centers/ "Schedule A Data Center Tour") to learn how we can help ensure your data availability.

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[ 
 ![Jim Kothe](https://res.cloudinary.com/dvlpy3tua/image/upload/fl_sanitize/uploads/jim-kothe.jpg)
Jim KotheVice President of Sales Operations

 ](/knowledgebase/blog/authors/jim-kothe)
[Disaster Recovery](/knowledgebase/blog/tag/disaster%20recovery)

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