{"id":10164,"date":"2021-12-27T13:28:03","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T13:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.otava.com\/?p=10164"},"modified":"2025-11-07T06:42:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T06:42:35","slug":"defining-proper-crisis-communication-in-it-organizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.otava.com\/blog\/defining-proper-crisis-communication-in-it-organizations\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Proper Crisis Communication in IT Organizations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 300px; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/f.hubspotusercontent20.net\/hubfs\/2500027\/defining-proper-crisis-communications-in-it-organizations.jpg\" alt=\"defining-proper-crisis-communications-in-it-organizations\" width=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>With major hacks, hurricanes and other disasters hitting the news lately, <a href=\"\/building-your-disaster-recovery-plan-5-things-to-consider?__hstc=233546881.2806940901e3b8dbeed0260c3a7e25e3.1555105723835.1557240211313.1557268813178.9&amp;__hssc=233546881.1.1557268813178&amp;__hsfp=602601415\" rel=\" noopener\">disaster recovery planning<\/a> has become a necessity\u00a0for every\u00a0<span style=\"background-color: transparent;\">IT\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"background-color: transparent;\">organization. W<\/span><span style=\"background-color: transparent;\">e&#8217;ve talked a lot about how to handle a disaster and developing a disaster recovery (DR) plan, but let&#8217;s take a deeper dive into actually putting a plan into motion.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the scenario: your company has done it&#8217;s due diligence\u00a0and put a disaster recovery plan into place. It&#8217;s performed the <a href=\"\/its-all-in-the-test-how-to-test-your-dr-plan?__hstc=233546881.2806940901e3b8dbeed0260c3a7e25e3.1555105723835.1557240211313.1557268813178.9&amp;__hssc=233546881.1.1557268813178&amp;__hsfp=602601415\" rel=\" noopener\">requisite tests<\/a> and knows that the plan works. Now, a fire hit your main data center on premise and you need to fail over to your Otava DR environment.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Key_Personnel\"><\/span><span style=\"color: #0a86c8;\">Key Personnel<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Now, back to reality. Does your organization&#8217;s DR plan start with identifying the right people to contact when a crisis hits? Crisis communication\u00a0is crucial to any DR plan and can be the difference between a successful recovery or the dissolution\u00a0of a company.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 532px;\" title=\"Key personnel to contact in a crisis disaster recovery contact\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn2.hubspot.net\/hubfs\/2500027\/contact%20%20tree.png\" alt=\"Key personnel to contact in a crisis disaster recovery contact\" width=\"532\" data-constrained=\"true\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Develop a contact list of the people who should be notified in a disaster situation. Make sure to include all of their contact information, as shown above.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Generate_a_Call_Tree\"><\/span><span style=\"color: #0a86c8;\">Generate a Call Tree<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: transparent;\">When a disaster hits, response time is key; and in order to respond quickly, employees need to know who to contact to set a recovery plan into motion.\u00a0Once you have identified who the key personnel are, define the order in which they should be contacted and develop a call tree.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn2.hubspot.net\/hubfs\/2500027\/Call%20tree.png\" alt=\"Call tree.png\" width=\"504\" height=\"372\" \/><\/p>\n<p>With a call tree in place, the key personnel can respond rapidly to a crisis and put the DR plan to work.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"External_Contacts\"><\/span><span style=\"color: #0a86c8;\">External Contacts<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>When in crisis, we often have difficulty organizing our thoughts. This is why a DR plan is so crucial.\u00a0<span style=\"background-color: transparent;\"> When a crisis hits, your organization undoubtedly has several vendors, partners and service providers that it needs to contact to initiate recovery. Even the organization in our beginning scenario\u00a0needed to <a href=\"https:\/\/Otavanetworks.com\/contact\/\">contact Otava<\/a> to fail over it it&#8217;s DR environment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: transparent;\"> Here is an example of how to organize those contacts in your\u00a0DR plan:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: transparent;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn2.hubspot.net\/hubfs\/2500027\/external%20contacts.png\" alt=\"external contacts.png\" width=\"552\" height=\"504\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"background-color: transparent;\">These contacts should also be organized into a call tree as done previously with internal personnel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Bottom_Line\"><\/span><span style=\"color: #0a86c8;\">Bottom Line<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>A DR plan without the proper channels of crisis communication identified has nowhere to go and no context for execution. In order to recover quickly, avoid catastrophic\u00a0data loss, and keep customers satisfied, companies should ensure that accurate personnel and communication information is in place.<\/p>\n<p>{{cta(&#8216;2379cd63-1ed6-4568-bc32-7b8f2ac2e12a&#8217;,&#8217;justifycenter&#8217;)}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disaster recovery planning has become a necessity for all organizations, but actually putting a plan into motion requires proper crisis communication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[201,71],"other_category":[],"class_list":["post-10164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disaster-recovery","tag-crisis-communication","tag-disaster-recovery"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 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