Introduction

Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP), and Business Continuity Planning (BCP) which is wider and includes people, are huge topics which fill many pages, on the internet and elsewhere, with advice and suggestions for the effective operation of your business after a disaster.

 

This paper does not attempt to give you all the answers.  However, as a Vuture customer, you have already purchased a tool which you may not realise could be extremely useful to you when considering your DRP or BCP.  We at Vuture therefore decided to put together a list of ideas and suggestions for ways in which you could leverage your Vuture platform to help you, after a disaster.  Vuture will not be able to provide all the answers or the entire solution but it should be a helpful additional component in your overall Disaster Recovery planning.

 

It is not necessary to terrify your staff with doom and gloom by making these plans visible to all at this stage.  Bear in mind that, with Vuture’s container structure, it is easy to build a network of emails and plans and keep them restricted “eyes only” to a very few users initially.

 

Things to think about when planning for Disaster Recovery

1. Immediately after a disaster – who does what?

As part of your recovery planning you will have a list of key stake holders and executives who have responsibilities in the event of a disaster.  These executives could initiate triggered actions in Vuture which could, for example, send pre-prepared emails to selected staff members or to all staff.  

 

Teams of individuals could use the fact that Vuture is browser-based to connect remotely.  Integrate the easy, pre-prepared contact that Vuture offers into your planning now.

 

2. Think about an alternative office space and equipment needs

Consider creating a checklist on Vuture which identifies potential locations or a list for which equipment will be needed urgently, and by whom.  Your internal systems may be compromised, depending on the nature of the disaster, but Vuture has a standalone option which, as a remote platform, can offer a safe haven for this kind of detail.

 

3. DATA!

Data is potentially the most vulnerable of your assets, but, after people, it is likely to be the most important asset you have.  Data must be backed up constantly and needs to be easily restored after a disaster.  Think about where and how you are currently backing up your data.  How easy is it to restore?  Vuture’s platform is in the cloud, safely encrypted and is quick to restore.  Accessible via a browser, any time and anywhere, Vuture makes it easy to protect your second most valuable resource.

 

4 Internal Communications

Communication is our business.  After a disaster, the need to communicate will be paramount.  How will your staff communicate?  If business email and phones are offline what will you do?  As part of your DRP you need to think about who employees should contact to confirm the status of the business and to find out what is happening.  Who will stakeholders contact to execute the DR Plan?  You could record the personal contact details of staff securely in Vuture, along with lists of clients, legal support, suppliers, the marketing/PR team and so on.

 

Opens, reads and links clicked can be tracked to ensure that you know who has responded to any emails you send and Vuture Forms can be used to assess staff abilities at any remote site you may designate.

 

5. External Communications

Using lists of media, clients, customers and vendors held in Vuture, you could build templated reminder emails and microsites into a “crisis management kit”.  This would make getting core messages out in a crisis much easier, particularly when your world is potentially in chaos.  Having a pre-written, templated piece, ready to go will ease the burden of coping with any disaster and make it quicker to contact the media when necessary.

 

In addition, Vuture can be a potential resource used to notify customers of a necessary internal system lockdown - for example, a hacking attempt occurs, and systems need to temporarily lock down to undergo the Disaster Recovery process.

 

For Vx customers using SSO facing an internal system lockdown, they will need to contact their Account Manager and/or Support. From there, an agreement/authorization will need to be reached to allow Vuture to temporarily disable Multi Factor Authentication and change one or more email addresses of specific users to a Gmail account temporarily. The email address change will then allow Vx customers to log into Vuture using Email and Password via a password reset mailing sent to the Gmail address.

 

6. Update and Improve

Don’t put a plan together and then just proceed to ignore it.  Have an updating plan for how often you will review, update and improve your DRP.  Use Vuture to set up a workflow that will remind you to edit your prepared emails, review your team lists and tweak your microsites.  With Vuture’s integration into your CRM it will not be necessary to constantly re-upload staff or client lists – they will be refreshed regularly.