What is a disaster recovery site?

What is a disaster recovery site and why is disaster recovery an important feature in any business continuity plan?

Companies use business continuity in their darkest times – disasters are rarely planned and cause significant stress and disruption to people and processes.

To help elevate this potential stress, many businesses have developed a well-practiced and reviewed business continuity and disaster recovery plan. Planning to manage possible threats can mean the difference between business survival and total shutdown and is a key element of this strategy is finding the right dedicated disaster recovery site for your business.

A disaster recovery (DR) site is a dedicated place where your company can temporarily relocate following a physical or digital disaster. Having a DR site ensures that a company can continue operations until they can transition back to their original premise. This is a cornerstone feature in any comprehensive business continuity plan. A dedicated DR site provides a sense of assurance to your company’s employees, stakeholders and customers knowing you are prepared for any unexpected circumstance. A DR site should be equipped with everything your business might require including these the key things.

1. Facilities

Experiencing a disaster is uncomfortable enough without having to use a sub-standard facility that does not cater to your business needs. Dealing with outdated equipment or a cramped environment can easily add to employee stress during an already difficult time. It is important for your employees to feel at home in the disaster recovery site you choose so they can get back to business efficiently.

You should consider if your DR site is equipped with everything your business needs to resume operations seamlessly.

2. Flexibly: Shared and dedicated site

Business continuity planning is an investment for a company. In approaching your leadership team, it is important to consider options that allow cost-saving and flexibility – if it suits your company’s needs. Some disaster recovery sites allow you to choose between dedicated or shared business continuity suites to best match your requirements and budget.

A dedicated business continuity suite is a higher investment; however, it is designed according to your requirements. It is commonly described as a blank canvas that is physically built within the facility, an environment relating to how many “seats” you wish to protect. These environments are bespoke, and you can request a range of security protections like fingerprint scanning, Port Access Card (PAC), pin access to name a few. Another key feature to look for at your DR site is “follow-me printing”, an added feature on printers to ensure the security of confidential documents.

A shared or “multi-subscriber” offering is designed to protect a wider range of businesses and provides a more standardised setup to do so. At Interactive, we conduct a risk profiling exercise, to ensure that in the event of a disaster we can meet our customers’ requirements.

3. Security

A disaster recovery site should have built-in resiliency. Ensure your provider’s facilities are power protected, secure, redundant, fully managed, monitored and maintained. In addition, it is recommended you review if the provider’s services comply with Australian and International standards to ensure your employees and data are secure. This is especially important if you are working in a regulated industry as compliance and security regulations are constantly updated. Your dedicated provider should be well-versed with any regulatory updates and always offer a compliant solution.

How we help

With over 30 years of experience in this space, the business continuity and data centre team at Interactive is a trusted pair of hands to assist in any disaster.

We continuously refine our processes and update our facilities to ensure we are ready for almost anything. Interactive will work with you to best find a solution that fits your business’s needs – offering both shared and dedicated suites on-site.

We have world-class business continuity facilities with mission-critical data centres to provide comprehensive coverage for our customers.

Given the nature of the business and the industries we support, our Business Continuity services comply with Australian and International standards. We are ISO 9001: Quality standards and ISO 27001: Information Security certified. All our facilities are power protected with generator back-up, UPS back-up, fire detection and suppression on-site. Our sites are available 24×7, all year round to ensure our clients are always covered. With a dedicated account manager and engineering team onsite, our main priority is providing proactive care for our customers, every day.