WHAT
NONPROFIT
EXECUTIVES
SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
&
DISASTER
RECOVERY
“There is a lack of
understanding at the
executive level of what is
actually being done on
the technology level.”
Expert Technology Spotlight
With limited resources to devote to IT, let alone disaster recovery and data backups, nonprofits often face devastating losses when a disaster does strike, forcing some organizations to close their doors or reduce or eliminate services while they recover.
Linda Widdop, Tech Impact’s Director of Technical Services, has been helping nonprofit executives and IT staff find cost-effective technology solutions, for issues like disaster recovery and backup, which improve daily and long-term operations. One of the major problems she has noticed in her 12 years at Tech Impact, is that many organizations have a disconnect between their executive level and technology level.
“Often, nonprofit executives assume that their business critical systems and data are protected from disaster. They assume that their IT staff or vendor has everything backed up properly,” Linda explains, “However, often the IT manager is using his or her own judgement to create a backup strategy and might only be creating one backup copy, then overwriting it every two weeks with a new copy, or they may be using outdated technology to run backups due to budget constraints.”
And when it comes to disaster recovery, small nonprofits may not even have
a disaster recovery plan, while larger nonprofits may not have the right plan in place due to a lack of shared knowledge between IT staff and executives.
Imagine your organization’s headquarters completely burned down. No one is hurt but the building is inaccessible. That’s where the organization’s servers and backup machines were housed, not to mention all finance, contract, and development teams. After the initial shock and logistical challenges of relocating staff and directing client services are underway, you need to restore business operations. What if your systems can’t be restored? What if your data backup wasn’t sufficient?
“Nonprofits could end up in breach of contract or not meet compliance standards, such as HIPAA. For example, if they have a contract with a government agency and must always have possession of specific data, then their contract is in breach. Or if they can’t run billing on time due to data loss, the organization simply would not be able to continue operating,” Linda says.
While these are some worst-case scenarios, it is important to understand the consequences of poor coordination when it comes to disaster recovery and backup planning between
technology administrators and executives.
“A more common issue is that one or more departments in the organization could become unoperational while the IT staff tries to restore data. Your case managers might have to revert to writing everything down by hand and transferring it to electronic systems later,” Linda adds.
For most of the nonprofits Linda works with, the cloud is the best solution, “I tell nonprofits all the time to rely less on backing up systems and more on moving systems to the cloud. You could spend thousands of dollars trying backup and restore email, whereas you could just use Office 365, which is free for nonprofits and provides better service. It’s a no-brainer.”
In addition, if you are in the cloud you do not have to worry about getting other systems or data restored, because you are paying the cloud service provider to handle that, versus buying a new server and waiting for your technology staff to get it operational.
If your systems cannot be moved to the cloud, Tech Impact offers npVault as their cloud backup solution. npVault uses an enterprise platform to provide backup to local and cloud storage. npVault is HIPAA compliant, provides 99% uptime, and all it takes is a phone call to Tech Impact to get your data restored.
“I tell nonprofits all the
time to rely less on
backing up systems
and more on moving
systems to the cloud.”
4 Reasons Why Nonprofit Execs
Should Get More Involved
1. Budget for disaster recovery.
Imagine this: Your email server--you know that large, squarish thing next to the broom in that one closet--just died. So you talk to your IT manager, “How soon can you get email backup? We can’t get any work done.” And he or she replies, “Hey, remember when I asked you about purchasing a new server yesterday, but you said it wasn’t in the budget and to just make it work? Well, can we get a new server now?”
As a result email could take days or even weeks to get up and running again. By talking to your IT support team you will be able to stay in-the-know about your nonprofit’s hardware needs and can work with IT to find other low-cost alternatives, such as moving to cloud-based email.
2. Determine what data is mission critical.
Those vacation pictures from the Florida Keys, especially the ones you took on the beach of someone you think looks like Bill Murray (you’re 95.99% sure it’s Bill Murray). Mission critical? To you, maybe. To your nonprofit? Definitely not.
IT staff might not know what is mission critical and what is not. Taking time with your IT support staff to identify what data is required to operate the business will help determine how the data should be backed up. Your financial data and client case data is 100% critical to daily and long-term operations, those pictures of you on the beach with the Billy Murray look alike? Not so much.
3. Develop business continuity strategies in case of a disaster.
If you lost everything today, what would your staff need right away to stay operational? Phones? Email? Internet? Computers? How soon could you get these things, that is, what is your Recovery Time Objective (RTO)?
By working directly with your organization’s IT support team, you can better understand the systems in place and discuss fallback options. Knowing your organization’s capabilities and RTO ahead of time will allow for a smoother transitions and quicker turnaround during a time of crisis.
4. Identify weaknesses in infrastructure.
Your nonprofit’s IT support team knows how healthy--or unhealthy--your organization’s hardware and software is, and are often able to see a system failure coming before it happens. This goes back to that scenario in #1, “Remember that server I asked for yesterday?”
Developing a rapport with your IT staff can go a long way. When that IT manager, Denis--because now you know him as more than “IT Guy”--comes to talk to you about the slowing email server and how many times it has crashed today, don’t blow him off with the whole, “it’s not in the budget, figure it out” spiel. Instead, jump right into a conversation about options, and how much longer Denis thinks the server will last. Once you fully understand what Denis and the organization as a whole is facing if the server fails, you can collaborate to find the optimum solution that will work for the organization’s budget and keep the organization running smoothly.
7 Things to Consider When Creating a Disaster
Recovery and Backup Plan
1. What types of disaster should we plan for? Worst-case scenario: the office vending machine stopped
working and your staff have congregated in the lunch room, demanding free Cheetos. Oh fine, that’s not a “real” disaster. You and your IT support staff should run through REAL disaster scenarios such as a hurricane, flood, tornado, earthquake, fire, power outage, system failure, security breach, or good ol’ human error and put together a procedure for conceivable crisis situations and figure out a way to get essential systems back online immediately.
2. How much should we invest in disaster recovery and backups? Hmmm, invest a little extra time
and money into preventative technology solutions now… or wait until the organization is crippled by a [insert disaster here]? You could end up spending way more to fix a crisis than it would have cost you to prevent it in the first place. And if your nonprofit is unable to keep up with infrastructure due to the cost, there are alternative solutions, such as cloud services and storage. If your IT manager doesn’t know enough about cloud solutions, put him or her in touch with Tech Impact. We can guide you both to a plan that fits your business needs and budget.
3. How should we handle mission critical information? You wouldn’t backup all those selfies you took
with volunteers at an event the same way you would backup your finance information, would you? While your duck-face was on-point that day, losing those photos would not be as devastating as being unable to bill for services. Your organization probably has contracts to fulfill, compliance protocols to follow, regulations to meet, not to mention operational business information such as payroll, billing, and donor and volunteer tracking maintain. The more operation critical the information, the more protocols should be outlined in your disaster recovery plan.
4. How quickly can we restore operations? Or, what is our RTO?
How soon can we become operational after a disaster? A few hours? A week? By identifying important operational systems, such as email, and outlining a plan to get those systems online first, your organization will be able to continue working while other less immediate systems are being restored. The goal is to have as little down-time as possible, and many nonprofits are turning to the cloud for this very reason.
5. Where should we keep backups? At home, you may keep everything you don’t know what to do
with in the closet. However, data management for your organization needs to be sophisticated. Some nonprofits rely heavily on on-site servers, which they probably do keep in a closet. Instead, consider a secondary backup to the cloud or another off-site server to ensure that if one becomes unoperational, you still have another way to restore your data. We call this the “Belt AND Suspender” approach. 6. How far back in time should we store information? Or, what is our RPO? Your nonprofit has been
around since before Al Gore invented the Internet right? Do you have backups of the fundraising flyers from 1998? Probably not. Should you have backups of client
intake forms from 1998? Maybe. If you provide services to children, you might need to keep all related information on those services for 18 years or more for compliance and government regulation. This is your Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. 7. How many backup copies should we have?
Similar to #5, you know what they say about keeping all of your
servers in one closet, don’t you? The last thing you want to hear from IT manager is that all of the organization’s backups were destroyed in the same fire that destroyed the main server. If you MUST have a server in a closet, then at the very least keep the backups somewhere else. If at all possible, keep backups in the cloud.
RTO:
Recovery Time Objective is the amount of timeit takes to restore a minimum level of service after a disaster to maintain business operations.
RPO:
Recovery PointObjective is how far back in time
to restore the information needed to resume normal operations.
6 Reasons Why Nonprofits are Backing
Up Data in the Cloud
1. It’s a catch-all solution, if you find the right provider.
Nonprofits love the cloud, because it provides assurances that are
frequently beyond their capabilities, not because their IT staff are incapable, but rather due to a lack of resources. However, it is important to do your research before going with the first cloud service provider you find. Review the vendor’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) to see what you can expect from them and whether their services meet the needs of your nonprofit.
2. The cloud is secure.
Most big name cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are very secure. Do you think they would be in business if they weren’t? Even less known cloud options such as npVault, Tech Impact’s cloud backup solution is HIPAA compliant and definitely more secure than that closet in your office. Your organization’s data is constantly backed up so no matter what
disasters hit your nonprofit, your data is always safe and available. The trick here is to do some research about the company and the solution BEFORE clicking on the purchase button.
3. Lower overhead from hardware.
The cloud is essentially a server farm that is maintained by the service provider. In the long-run, the cloud can save nonprofits money, because the burden of purchasing, upgrading, and maintaining expensive infrastructure is completely
on the service provider. The cloud provider relies on high volume to keep prices low and features high, which is something a nonprofit could never afford to do.
4. Faster RTO.
As Linda Widdop mentioned in the “Expert Technology Spotlight”, switching to cloud based systems like Office 365 allows your organization to get back to your mission faster. And keeping other data, such as donor or client information, in the cloud empowers your nonprofit to restore that information at anytime. In other words, the cloud will drastically cut the amount of downtime you have after a disaster strikes. For example, lasy year the Tech Impact team worked remotely several days
last winter due to winter weather, but the Help Desk team didn’t miss a call because Tech Impact uses a cloud based VoIP phone system. Our staff simply took their phones home with them or forwarded calls to their cell phones and were able to assist clients. All while staying safe and warm at home!
5. Access the data anytime.
When looking at cloud service providers, be sure to do your due diligence when searching for the right vendor. Read their SLA carefully! Make sure you can access or pull out your data anytime, and that the vendor has an escrow policy in case they go out of business (let’s face it, it happens), so that you are able to retrieve your data before they terminate service. 6. Data backups are automatically provided by the cloud
vendor.
Your nonprofit’s data is backed up multiple times to ensure it’s always readily available. Since you are paying the service provider to store and protect your data, it’s imperative that they always have it, no matter what has happened on your end the cloud has your back. Check their policy on this to make sure that their “uptime” and availability meet your requirements.
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