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You can plan for it. You can train for it. You can create as many systems designed to prevent it as you want, but at the end of the day disasters still occur - and they happen when we least expect them.

Whether it's a natural disaster that knocks a data centre offline or a cyber attack that ravages critical systems, there's no shortage of damage that can happen to a business any time. According to Gartner, companies can lose an average of $5,600 per minute in an outage - $300,000 per hour.

It's imperative to have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place to ensure your business is properly prepared to cope with any disaster that might come along, in order to get back up and running as soon as possible. To make sure your plan is airtight and isn't leaving any room for error, there are several questions you should ask along the way.

1. Does each member of your disaster recovery team have a defined role?
Having a disaster recovery team with defined roles is key. You need to consider each person's responsibilities and establish a communication plan. This includes having contact information for the team readily accessible at all times, with roles, responsibilities and contact details outlined. Having clearly defined roles along with a concrete communication plan will make carrying out a disaster recovery plan infinitely easier from the get-go.

2. Does your budget allow for additional expenses?
Much like the unpredictable nature of a disaster itself, unexpected costs can be a barrier to getting back online. Do you need to failover onto the cloud? You'll have to prepare for the usage fees associated with it. Do you need to bring in consultants or contractors to assist you? You'll have to pay them just as much as, if not more than, your employees.

Every minute of downtime can result in huge IT expenses, especially for larger enterprises. Taking into account these unplanned expenses ahead of time and building them into the overall disaster recovery plan is critical to ensure your team doesn't meet any further snags when trying to get authorisation for these costs.

3. Is your data mobile?
When a data centre goes offline, your data may have to temporarily go elsewhere - i.e. the cloud - in order for the company to access it again as quickly as possible. In other words, you should ask yourself if your data is confined to your physical infrastructure, or if it's mobile and can move freely to different locations.

Data mobility means immediate and self-service data access any time anywhere that also enables accelerated application development, faster testing and business acceptance, more development output, improved productivity and improved time-to-impact business intelligence. Without data mobility, you run the risk of higher costs and lost time.

4. Are you aware of the biggest vulnerabilities to your data?
It's important to be aware of what is most likely to go wrong when creating a disaster recovery plan so you can focus on those vulnerabilities and maximise the value of the plan. Some examples of the most common data vulnerabilities include deployment failures, database inconsistencies, and data leaks. Honing in on the vulnerabilities and finding ways to avoid them will make for a much smoother disaster recovery process.

5. Does your plan actually work?
Testing the plan to make sure it rolls out successfully is an absolute must. After testing, analyse the result to see if the plan performed according the specifications. After analysing the outcome, are there any areas that need to be improved? Once you're done with the analysis, test again and again. Testing a plan should be done consistently on a regular basis so the plan can evolve becoming the best it can be.

6. Are all of your systems up-to-date?
Finally, having up-to-date systems is essential to have a strong disaster recovery plan. Do you have the most modern backup and recovery solution or is it just another one of the same old solutions that don't work? Considering the newest technologies such as copy data virtualisation will bring the way you manage disaster recovery to the next level.

The risks associated with poor disaster recovery, such as data loss, unforeseen budget expenses, and loss of customer trust can be avoided by taking all of these questions into consideration during planning. Having the ability to recover as quickly as possible - while minimising downtime and expenses - will make the lives of your IT team easier, as well as the entire organisation.
More info: www.actifio.com