Why Utilities Need a Disaster Recovery Plan
Imagine this scenario: You and your team lock up and close the office doors for the weekend. Everything’s in place and waiting for Monday morning when you’ll be processing your community’s monthly bills. Monday comes, and you unlock the front door. You smell something damp. Last night’s rainstorm was intense, but you don’t think much of it—until you see sunlight in the building where it shouldn’t be. You have a hole in your roof, and your server room has been swamped. If your utility has a disaster recovery plan, you and your team can get to work resorting operations. If you don’t, it will take longer to get those utility bills out than you planned.
What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a formal document outlining what steps a utility needs to take after a disaster that may or may not have disrupted operations. The plan will have strategies to minimize the disaster’s effect on the community and help the utility resume key operations or continue operating as if there were no disruption.
Unlike a business continuity plan, a disaster recovery plan focuses on what needs to happen right after a disaster. It does not necessarily cover all contingencies for business processes, assets, human resources, and business partners. A typical DRP will address operational disruptions, including anything from power outages, loss of access to a facility, phone outages, internet outages, or server disruption.
Why is DRP Important for Utilities?
A utility disaster recovery plan is essential with the start of hurricane season, the recent severe storms, and the rash of tornados. Here’s what having a disaster recovery plan can do for you and your community:
Limit the extent and minimize routine operations disruptions,
Minimize the interruption’s economic impact,
Provide alternative means for everyday operations in advance,
Establish smooth and rapid service restoration, and
Train your team for an emergency.
By limiting and lessening the factors listed above, you and your team will still be able to provide exceptional customer service.
Steps to Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan for Utilities
The way your team responds to a disaster can be a PR nightmare of a PR success, depending on how you handle the situation. So, when the unexpected happens, a utility disaster recovery plan gets your team hustling after the disaster and offers a level of stability even in the most challenging situations. Having a practiced, well-thought-out strategy in place means your team can immediately assess the situation and provide answers to your community as soon as possible. Following these steps below will help you to create a plan.
Assess Your Environment and Risk Level
To prepare for a disaster, you need to understand your community’s and utility’s risk level. Knowing the kinds of disasters that can strike can help you be prepared when they happen. Listing all natural and man-made disasters and their disruptions will help you see operational commonalities that you need to consider. For example, a power or internet outage can keep your team from accessing your community’s data. Not having that data will make it difficult for your team to serve your community effectively. Therefore, you need to consider backups for power (e.g. a generator) and internet (e.g. a secondary internet service provider).
Have a Disaster Business Continuity Plan
When your operational systems fail, it’s essential to restore them quickly. And having a disaster business continuity plan helps you take charge and deploy your team effectively, instead of looking at each other and saying, “Now what?” The quicker your utility can respond, your community’s services will be restored. And once you know the risks your community and utility face, you can strategize for possible service disruptions to provide continuous service with as few disruptions as possible. So when a disaster happens, an organized and prepared team will have them hitting the ground running instead of stumbling.
Know What Equipment You Need
Effective communication is essential to your team’s strategy, and having the right equipment to help you communicate is as important as your disaster recovery plan. Without power, internet, servers, hardware, and software, it is almost impossible to communicate with your customers in today’s digital world. If your hardware and software are on-premise, you’ll need the power to access your data and share information with your community, and you’ll need your hardware and software to function effectively. And you’ll need backups of your data to ensure that you have the information you need. Not having the right power, data, and equipment backups on-premise can severely delay your efforts to restore service.
With NorthStar Cloud, your data is stored in the cloud and is backed up routinely. Having your data in the NorthStar cloud and stored remotely protects your data not only from local power outages and disasters, but you’ll also have your data stored on the highly secure and completely accessible AWS architecture. When your CIS is in the cloud, you’ll have the NorthStar and AWS team to assist you in event that services are disrupted to your community.
Test Your Utility’s Disaster Recovery Plan
It’s not enough to have a disaster recovery plan for your utility. It must be tested to find any flaws in the strategy or ensure that everyone is comfortable with their role in your team’s disaster strategy. When a disaster happens, don’t let your team get caught without a strategy for a quick recovery. Assessing your risk, determining your plan, and testing your strategy are essential in getting your community back up after a disaster. There are several ways to test your plan, from table readings to mock drills, but no matter what tactic you choose, it’s essential to test your plan. When everyone is familiar with your strategy, you can rest assured knowing that your team will be ready when a disaster occurs.
Interested in seeing how moving to the cloud can help you with your disaster recovery plan? Contact the NorthStar sales team to learn more.