When you run a law firm, data is far more than a collection of files. It’s profitability, productivity, and trust. If anything happens to it, the future of your entire company could be on the line. Strong security measures help significantly, by reducing your risk of experiencing an attack, but they don’t eliminate it.
Stopping breaches is only half the equation. You must also prepare for the scenario where threat actors manage to sneak through your nets anyway. But how? After your systems have already been compromised, what can you possibly do to save them? And is there a way to prepare for other emergencies – such as fires, floods, and outages – simultaneously?
Read more: AI for Law Firms: How It Can (and Can’t) Benefit Your Practice
What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A disaster recovery plan protects your firm from cyber-attacks, natural disasters, and other emergency scenarios. It ensures that your business operations can continue, limits data loss, and helps you maintain strong client relationships. This is utterly crucial for law firms, where data is gold and constant availability is expected.
Without a plan, you will be unprepared for any disasters that occur. Staff can quickly become panicked, important tasks fall by the wayside, and chaos ensues. In the end, this can cost your firm more than just some data or a day’s profits. You may lose client trust, resulting in fewer cases and reduced long-term profitability.
All lawyers understand that preparation is non-negotiable. The same applies to your IT. A disaster recovery plan should be part of every firm’s business strategy.
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Your IT Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist
But what should you include? Here’s a simple checklist for disaster recovery planning:
1. Assess Risk
Start by identifying every single event that could threaten your IT infrastructure, from data breaches to floods. Then, perform a business impact analysis (BIA). Categorize every potential risk by how badly it would disrupt your firm. This information will be crucial during the rest of the planning process.
2. Define Recovery Objectives
Establish your recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). How long can you afford to be offline, and how much data can you lose before it becomes a problem? These metrics decide how aggressive your disaster recovery plan should be.
3. Implement a Backup and Recovery Strategy
If you haven’t already, then you need to immediately develop a data backup and recovery procedure. A random glitch could wipe it tomorrow, and leave you with no recourse. Ideally, back data up to multiple locations (including at least one off-site), and create a schedule to test the recovery process.
4. Secure Critical Workflows
Data isn’t the only thing that needs protection. You’ll also need a way for staff to continue working. Assume that any and all critical systems could be offline during an incident, and plan accordingly. Account for software, networks, and even the office location itself.
One possible solution might be temporary work from home during emergencies, for example. This bypasses the office and network entirely, and workflow software can be installed on a work laptop that can easily be removed from the building when needed. The exact solutions you choose, of course, will depend on your unique circumstances.
5. Identify Roles and Responsibilities
Decide who will be responsible for each task during a disaster. Ensure that everyone understands their role, provide additional training, and give them a written copy of the plan. The best strategy in the world means nothing if your staff don’t carry it out.
6. Create a Communication Plan
During a crisis, the last thing you want is silence. Unfortunately, your normal communication systems will likely be the first thing to go. Develop an alternative means of communicating both internally and externally, and test it to make sure it works.
It may also be helpful to craft scripts ahead of time for important messages. This will prevent the message from becoming muddled in the heat of the moment.
7. Test Thoroughly
Just because you wrote the plan down, that does not mean it’s guaranteed to work in a real-life emergency. In reality, things rarely play out the way you expect them to. Perform numerous drills and tests to ensure that everything works as required.
Disaster Recovery Plan Testing Checklist:
- Schedule mock drills (at least annually)
- Test all backup systems and failovers
- Evaluate response times
- Review staff performance
- Document lessons learned
8. Audit Regularly
Your plan may be finished, but that doesn’t mean your job is. As time passes, your firm – and the environment it operates within – will change. Regular audits keep your plan up-to-date with any changes, preventing it from becoming obsolete.
Disaster Recovery Plan Audit Checklist:
- Confirm that all data backups are functioning
- Update software and infrastructure
- Inventory all critical assets and licenses
- Review security patches and firewalls
- Verify contact lists and vendor information
Using a Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist Template
If this is your first time creating a disaster recovery plan, then it’s natural to feel a bit overwhelmed. There are many things to consider, and the margin of error is razor thin. In this case, a disaster recovery plan checklist template may be useful. These lay out a basic guideline that you can follow, to ensure nothing important is missed.
However, this comes with a caveat. A template should only ever be a starting point. If you lean on it too heavily, you risk ending up with a barebones plan that will fail at the first sign of trouble. It’s important to always edit the template to suit your specific situation and needs.
Prevent Chaos, Even When the Worst Happens
An emergency doesn’t need to cost you everything. In fact, if handled correctly, it can actually strengthen client relationships. By creating a solid disaster recovery plan, testing it thoroughly, and implementing it effectively, you prove that they can trust you no matter what happens. As a result, your firm will thrive.
Disaster recovery is important – but it’s better to avoid it entirely. That’s why it’s essential to keep an eye on your IT infrastructure. You can learn more about proactive monitoring – what it is and why you need it – by reading our article.
FAQs
What’s a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A disaster recovery plan is a written strategy that helps you react effectively during an emergency. It allows you to maintain operational continuity and protect critical data.
What Should We Include in Our Disaster Recovery Test Plan Checklist?
In your disaster recovery plan checklist, you should include roles and responsibilities, data backup and recovery procedures, communication policies, and workarounds to ensure continued productivity.
How Often Should We Practice Our Disaster Recovery Plan?
Ideally you should test your disaster recovery plan at least once per year, or after any significant changes have occurred at your firm. You should test it again immediately after an incident, particularly if mistakes were made.
Can We Use a Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist Template?
When creating your checklist, a disaster recovery plan template can be very useful. However, remember to customize it to your precise needs.