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No, it needn't be difficult. Much of a DRP initiative is common sense. The rest
is greatly simplified through simple to use proven tools and templates.
This Disaster Planning Template was use by consultants who created the
Disaster Recovery Plan and Business Resumption plan that Merrill Lynch used
after 9/11. It is a proven process and set of tools.
This site is designed to catalog the easiest yet most effective approaches and products... to make disaster recovery planning less of a trauma and more of a business process.
The creation of the plan itself is the first port of call, but we also examine contingency audit and risk analysis from a simplification perspective.
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Risk analysis
is inextricably linked with disaster
recovery. Assessment of the risks which may
lead to disaster is essential in the
determination of what controls are
appropriate to the situation. Again,
however, risk analysis is often made more
difficult than necessary.
Do you really
need a complicated piece of software to
create your plan? Do you need 20 years
experience in business continuity planning?
Do you need to divert untold resources into
the plan creation exercise? Certainly, if
you employ the
Disaster Recovery Planning Template the answer
is... NO!
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How do you ensure that your disaster recovery plan meets your actual needs? How do you know that it will all work? Do you audit it, and if so, how?
Equally fundamentally, do you know what your resource/service dependencies are and what their time criticalities are? What of your actual everyday contingency practices - do they measure up?
To determine and ensure all of this with minimum fuss, a comprehensive but extremely simple to use product is now available.... the
Disaster Recovery Toolkit
- Business and IT Impact Analysis.
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Disaster Planning Information |
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Risk
analysis is inextricably linked with
disaster recovery. assessment of the
risks which may lead to disaster is
essential in the determination of
what controls are appropriate to the
situation. Again, however, risk
analysis is often made more
difficult than necessary.
The
Threat & Vulnerability Assessment
Tool Kit
and tool was designed to simplify
matters, and to make risk analysis
more widely accessible through
automation. It is now probably the
most widely used product and method
in the world
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For more information on disaster recovery plans and business continuity we are pleased to introduce our online
IT Productivity Center.
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Disaster Planning News
Whether you arfe a one-man operation or an international corporation,
your business relies on a set of core processes used by people in specific roles
who require certain IT systems and data. When disaster strikes, these people
need to find a way to keep these processes up and running.
But too often, DR strategies focus more on the type of disaster than the
particular business processes you need to protect. Focusing on the business
instead of merely on the disaster helps to ensure your business can survive many
challenges you might never have considered.
This disaster
recovery plan template is a road map for how businesses of all sizes can
develop an effective business continuity plan designed to minimize the impact of
disasters and reduce risk of time, money, valuable data, and
reputation.
more info
Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Strategy Definition
One recent survey finds that onetime events, such as the Japanese tsunami,
the Arab Spring, and Europe's sovereign debt crisis, exposed vulnerabilities in
private companies' business continuity preparedness. Among the chief executives
surveyed only a minority say they are very confident that their current risk
management strategies will prove effective over the next few years, with nearly
one-third (29 percent) citing the need to revisit those strategies.
The need to revisit business
continuity strategy was also cited by a greater percentage of companies that
have over seas operations (39 percent), compared with US-only companies (21
percent). International companies are also more alert to the threat and
potential effects of low-probability, high-impact events: 81 percent of
companies that feel a need to revisit business continuity plans in light of last
year's events.
Among companies that are changing their business continuity plans, there seems
to be a disconnect between where they think their focus should be and where it
actually is. While most of them (87 percent) agree that they need to focus more
on planning for a broad range of emerging risks, the bulk of their business continuity effort (70
percent) goes into preparing for known, recurring risks; a considerably smaller
30 percent of their effort goes into planning for as-yet-unknown
events.
more info
A business continuity plan defined
A business continuity plan is a users' guide - the documentation - for
how to preserve an organization. In order for a plan to be useful, it must
be created before an interruption occurs. Business continuity is disaster
recovery. Lost revenue is a driving force in business continuity.
The reason to do a recovery plan is essentially to keep the funding coming in
and the services going, and the clients being served.
- Emergency
planning are those procedures and steps done immediately after an
interruption to business.
- Disaster
recovery are the steps taken to restore some functions so that
some level of services can be offered.
- Business
continuity is restoration planning, completing the full circle to
get your organization back to where it was before an interruption.
more info
Business Continuity Planning 101
The basic process for developing a business continuity plan is:
- Create a business continuity planning team:
Members should be from operations management, the chief security officer, the
IT department, legal staff, and human resources.
- Define leadership roles: Determine which
executives and employees are critical to operating the business (and
supporting customers) that need to have access to key systems and information
at all time.
- Assume the worst and plan for needed extra
capacity: Before an event occurs, businesses need to plan ahead
for increased network bandwidth and secured remote access requirements.
- Define emergency voice and data communications
solutions: There are many to choose from, but a SSL VPN is one of
the leading solutions to provide flexible, remote access, which is essential
to any business continuity plan.
- Define access points for operations, network and
IT: Create a business continuity portal for employees and
partners. If the company has an Intranet, this site becomes command central
from which employees can access information - HR policies, emergency contacts
and a "start here" feature should be included.
- Contract for a secondary back-up site: Should the
primary site be unavailable, companies should have a real-time mirror of data
and staff housed at a secure facility.
- Backup data: In the event that the secondary site
is unavailable, organizations should plan for multiple layers of failover.
- Plan to utilize smartphones and tablets: With mobile devices and "wireless
networks", IT departments can leverage these tools to ensure complete
connectivity in times of emergencies.
- Pre-arrange Internet meeting capabilities: In the
event of an office closure, employees still need to communicate internally or
with external parties (i.e. suppliers, customers). Implement the technology
before it is needed
- Review number of sites and VPN gateways:
Conducting an annual audit to provide a complete picture of your network and
the ability to address problem areas before a disaster strikes.
- Test and test again: These 'fire drills'
enable the business continuity team to see how the current system is working,
especially when employees are accessing information from remote locations
(i.e. from home, a relative's house, and hotel). Once complete, those in
management, IT and human resources can modify their business continuity plan
accordingly.
more info
Many large companies believe they are immune to disasters
Disaster
Strikes Amazon - Europe down for two days
A lightning strike knocked out servers at Amazon's only European data center
and the provider has warned some of those affected face delays of up to two days
before they get back online.
Amazon has told its EC2 customers in Europe some of them could face outages
of as long as 24 to 48 hours as the cloud provider struggles to recover from a
lightning strike that disrupted power supplies to its Dublin, Ireland data
center. It took 3 hours to recover the first of the affected instances last
evening European time (midday Pacific Time) and after almost 12 hours a quarter
still remained offline, with knock-on effects slowing their likely recovery
time.
more info
