The entire DRP Disaster Recovery Planning process can quickly become overwhelming and, if you aren’t careful, very expensive. To make things easy, follow these three steps:

First, only prepare for incidents that are likely to happen. Ignore events that are unlikely to occur—otherwise you are wasting time and money. Make a list. Some geographical areas are more prone to fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, and similar threats. Some organizations are directly, or are in the proximity of, another organization that could be a terrorist target. Consider the possibility of a pandemic—or at least the fear of a pandemic causing your workers to stay away from the office.

Second, determine how the disaster would affect your organization. Consider loss of power, fuel, gas, electricity, and any other utilities your organization needs for daily operations. Remember the possibility of losing transportation services. Make a list such that you only focus your energy on disasters that will have a significant negative impact on your organization.

Third, integrate the lists so that you focus on preparing for the events that are both likely and that will have an intolerable impact on your organization.

Now your IT pros know what direction you want to go and they can get started putting together plans for you.