Setting a recovery time objective is one of the toughest decisions for a business to consider. After all, any downtime can feel catastrophic. And the amount of downtime a business can reasonably weather varies from business to business — and sometimes from season to season.
Here’s how to start figuring out the right recovery time objectives (RTOs) for your business:
Your Applications
List every application that your company uses to conduct business and prioritize them. Then, for each, document:
- Which applications will be affected by an interruption to your system
- Which are replaceable from other sources and which would be an irreplaceable loss.
- The people and processes that an interruption or breach of that application would affect.
- How much each application would cost you per hour if it went down.
Your IT support provider will need this information to identify how many different types of backups you might need and how often every single application should be backed up.
Impact of Downtime
- How much downtime is sustainable?
- What will the revenue loss be during downtime?
- What about security confidence from your customers? If their data is unavailable to them for more than a few hours, will it mean they look for another company?
Backup & Recovery Process
- Who has the responsibility of doing backups? Inhouse staff? An outsourced provider such as an MSP? Someone onsite or offsite needs to make sure those backups are being performed. In other words, they need to own it!
- Do you have a natural disaster data recovery plan? If a tornado hits the location of your servers or they get flooded from a flash storm, can you recover that data or is it lost forever?
Next Steps
Once you know the answer to these questions you will have an outline of how to set your recovery time. Take this to your managed service provider or internal IT team to start the conversation.
If you have any questions contact us or book a meeting. We would be happy to help answer them. Assistance with determining your RTO, RPO and full disaster recovery planning is one of the benefits of hiring a managed IT support provider.
>>Download the one-page Managed IT Checklist to help you choose IT support for business.
Are you aware of the most common cyberattack methods?
Did you know there are over 3.4 billion phishing emails sent every day? Phishing and other cybercriminal behavior are a lot more common than you’d think.
Our free “Phishing, Smishing, Vishing, Pharming? A Cyberattacks Guide” will inform you about cyberattack methods and give you the latest in data security tips.
Download Now
