Disaster Recovery Planning Template

Disaster Recovery Plans Not Keeping Up With Business Requirements

webmaster — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:56:02 -0600

Disaster planning is in trouble as many enterprises are not keeping up with changing requirements.

Many disaster recovery plans cannot keep up with the speed of doing business in today's world. A 24-hour recovery time from a disaster is enough to put many companies out of business.

Many business executives feel their disaster recovery strategy is woefully inadequate and that their disaster recovery plans are out-of-date and provide for minimal coverage. This coverage includes having their legacy applications run on their mainframe or proprietary systems. Very few disaster recovery plans go much deeper into the application suite. In interviews with business executives Janco estimates their coverage to be about 10% of their critical applications. According to the some estimates, 75% of all critical applications operate 24/7. That is precisely why corporations are moving away from disaster recovery to replicated data and processing. However, this falls short as well. Instead, what is needed is an architectural approach to the problem.

The Janco Disaster Recovery - Business Continuity Template directly address these issues.

Causes of Disasters

webmaster — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:51:54 -0600

According to Janco Associates, the primary factor in the activiation of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans is computer hardware failure.

Google person finder may be an options to include in disaster plans

webmaster — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:26 -0600

Disaster plans need to include a way to contact individuals who are in the area after an event.

Google has a tool to help people locate friends and loved ones who have been affected by the 8.8.-magnitude earthquake in Chile.

Google Person Finder allows users to search for information about people by name or leave information about people in both English and Spanish. The page said it contained 22,900 records. However, the page cautions users that all data input would be viewable and usable by all and that the company plays no role in verifying the information. Google had set up a similar Person Finder tool after Haiti's recent earthquake.

IT Systems Will Soon Start to Fail on a Regular Basis

webmaster — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:09:44 -0600

There is a big crunch coming, and companies will start to experience ever greater IT failures unless they start buying new hardware.

When the recession started, IT spending fell off a cliff. Hardware and software companies are hoping that IT spending will make a strong comeback because of the pent up demand and the fact that there is a lot of aging IT gear installed today.

Most companies have extended their maintenance contracts, but, at some point, that will not be enough as IT systems start failing.

Predicting IT failure is not a hard thing to do. When you deal with tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of servers, data storage systems, network equipment, etc, it is a relatively simple statistical exercise.

The fact that IT systems are aging. Maintenance contract prices increase every year that older equipment is kept working. At some point it becomes more expensive than upgrading. And upgrading brings additional benefits such as higher performance from the latest processors and subsystems.

Currently, a large part of an organization's IT budget is being spent on regulatory compliance issues, and on security, which is related to regulatory compliance. For the executives, being in compliance means not going to jail.

But if you can't run your business IT applications reliably then being compliant becomes a moot point. So, will spending on basic IT infrastructure come roaring back this quarter? Or will companies try to eek out another few months of performance out of their aging IT systems?

Disaster Planning is Complex

webmaster — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:35:24 -0600

An increasing number of professionals know that small-scale emergencies can be contained if staff members are prepared to react quickly. Damage can be limited even in the face of a large-scale disaster. For example, cultural institutions in Charleston, South Carolina, formed a consortium that focused on disaster preparedness several years before they were hit by a hurricane. Many of those institutions sustained only minor damage because they were able to put their early warning procedures into operation.

Disaster planning is complex; the written plan is the result of a wide range of preliminary activities. The entire process is most efficient if it is formally assigned to one person who acts as the disaster planner for the institution and is perhaps assisted by a planning team or committee. The enterprise's director may play this primary role or may delegate the responsibility, but it is important to remember that the process must be supported at the highest level of the organization if it is to be effective. The planner should establish a timetable for the project and should define the scope and goals of the plan, which will depend largely on the risks faced by the enterprise.

Data protection in a state of flux

webmaster — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:35:04 -0600

The state of IT Disaster Planning and data protection is in flux. Conventional models of backup and restore have become obsolete and are being replaced by newer dynamic paradigms that involve disk-to-disk, virtual server provisioning, sophisticated data deduplication, and appliance-based operations.

Disaster Recovery Plan - Business Continuity Plan Template

ISO 27000 ( formerly ISO 17799 ) - Sarbanes-Oxley - HIPAA - PCI-DSS Compliant

Janco has identified four primary business drivers of data protection:

Provide Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. This is the traditional concern of mitigating exposure to information loss. However it has grown more complicated as 24/7, global economy, and open source have become standard business issues. Of paramount importance is overcoming the hurdles associated with backup window requirements, application performance, reliability and consistency, and recovery time.
Streamline Process Management and Increase Productivity. As staff and resources become overburdened, companies are refocusing on process management. Easing critical pressure points is often the catalyst to surviving a difficult fiscal climate.
Contain Storage and Server Costs. Controlling cost of operations has become a top priority for many organizations. With data growing at exponential rates, these costs can easily mushroom.
Support IT Infrastructure Consolidation. Today's data protection architecture seems to be intrinsically broken - as characterized by slow backups, complex recoveries, compromised application performance, and difficult resource administration. IT infrastructure consolidation including server virtualization magnifies the problems and elevates the rearchitecture of storage and data protection as a priority. Finding high performing, easy-to-use, scalable data protection remains a key imperative. Further, system migration of production servers and critical applications to a virtual environment are likely to be costly and painful unless an easy and minimum-impact solution to migration is built into the rearchitecture.

Which disasters should CIOs plan for?

webmaster — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:31:39 -0600

Planning for a disaster is a difficult task at best. A major provider of disaster recovery services, lists hardware problems as the number one cause of disaster, followed by power outages, hurricanes and floods. CIOs often ask "What scenarios should we prepare for?" and "How likely is it that it will happen to us?" When one thinks of disasters, big events such as Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 are the first come to mind. But if we look at the ultimate consequence of a disaster - downtime - we can see that any event, large or small, can have the same effect on IT infrastructure.

Certain areas of the United States have also had power supply problems in the recent past. Most notable is California with its infamous rolling blackouts. Parts of Texas also implemented rolling blackouts when there are abnormally high temperatures. Other regions of the country implement brownouts, where the voltage is reduced to customers during power emergencies. Brownouts can severely affect electronic equipment not protected with an UPS or voltage regulation device. A CIO whose data center was located in the region of California affected by the power crises said: You have to restore and operate your systems from an alternate location that has power. Obviously, that site is usually pretty far away and it is not practical to physically move systems. Moving an interconnected web of storage and servers to another set of infrastructure is a huge challenge. These things just were not designed for that kind of mobility and that is exactly the problem that virtualization solves.

Data deduplication as part of your backup strategy

webmaster — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:04:45 -0600

Traditional backup solutions create duplicate data in two ways:

Repeated full backups
Repeated incrementals of the same file when it changes multiple times.

A deduplication system identifies both situations and eliminates redundant files, reducing the amount of disk necessary to store your backups anywhere from 10:1 to 50:1 and beyond,
depending on the level of redundancy in your data. Deduplication systems also work their magic at the subfile level. To do so, they identify segments of data (a segment is typically smaller than a file but bigger than one byte) that are redundant with other segments and eliminate them. The most obvious use for this technology is to allow users to switch from disk staging strategies (where theyre storing only one nights worth of backups) to disk backup strategies (where theyre storing all onsite backups on disk).

There are two main types of deduplication. Target dedupe systems allow customers to send traditional backups to a storage system that will then dedupe them; they are typically used in medium to large datacenters and perform at high speed. Source dedupe systems use different backup software to eliminate the redundant data from the very beginning of the process and serve to back up remote offices and mobile users.

What is new in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning

webmaster — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:24:39 -0600

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity planning (DRP / BCP) is not new - many organizations have employed some form of (DRP / BCP) for quite some time.
Companies have been replicating their mainframe, storage, and database systems for years. Before that, they moved paper documents to offsite locations.
So, what' s new with DRP / BCP?

As business technology proliferated over the past 10 to 15 years, DRP / BCP coverage expanded from back office systems to all types of additional business applications.

New business applications and IT services help organizations react quickly to a dynamic marketplace and provide access to information - wherever and whenever it's needed. Areas of concern include:

Companies are reducing the overall number of data centers, consolidating remote and branch office assets in the process.
E-mail, instant messaging, IP telephony, and collaboration applications have become integral parts of many companies business processes.
Given the volume of users accessing information, securing the environment is crucial. Allowing unauthorized users to access classified information or failing to protect data in flight could result in significant security breaches.

Tape Versus Disk for Data Retention

webmaster — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:47:40 -0600

Tape vs Disk Debate

Long-term data retention includes weekly, monthly or other long-term backup, primary backup copy of data, off-line copy of static or fixed content data, archive and strategic data preservation. The emphasis is on low cost, long-term durability, compatibility, and energy efficiency for lengthy data retention. Tape is leveraged as a high performance bulk storage medium to off-load the disk cache, boosting the effectiveness and utilization of disk-based systems. From a green and economic efficiency standpoint, data staged off-line to tape consumes no energy while enabling exceptional performance during bulk restore operations. The combination results in both very green and economically efficient storage in addition to supporting business sustainability and enabling compliance.

A tape copy operation may be made locally and then physically transported to another location for safe off-site storage, or data may be replicated as part of the backup and data protection process to a remote VTL or tape library where a removable tape copy is made. Hybrid solutions also leverage diskto- disk locally with snapshots or other point-intime copies that are then replicated to another location or to a cloud-based storage managed service provider (MSP). Data and network bandwidth optimization techniques and technologies, including compression and deduplication among others, enable more data to be moved on available networks or to reduce networking requirements.

Security Breaches Are a Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Concern

webmaster — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:14:10 -0600

Servers are so compact that they could be removed from the building in a briefcase. When you consider the magnitude of the IT investment, and the value of the data and applications that ride on it, you can appreciate the critical importance of protecting it from unauthorized access. This is especially true after a disaster - anyone can walk off with you enterprise's key assets.

Server enclosures provide access control options such as lock-and-key, electronic control, RFID local readers and access cards.

Keys can be matched to individual cabinets, multiple cabinets of a certain type (such as containing networking equipment, telephone company equipment or servers), or any other combination desired.
Electronic control can provide multiple types of access, such as remote control, timed control, card reader control or a combination of all of these methods.
Diversified access-control strategies enable you to manage access at the level of function and/or individual, while a top-level disaster recovery administrator has a master key.

Disaster Planning and Business Continuity Best Practices

webmaster — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:42:58 -0600

Disaster recovery and business continuity best practices - The top 7 best practices

1. Focus on operations

2. Train everyone on how to execute the DRP and BCP

3. Have a clear definition for declaring when a disaster or business interruption occurs that will set the DRP and BCP process into motion -

4. Integrate DRP and BCP with change management

5. Focus on addressing issues BEFORE they impact the enterprise

6. Validate that all technology is properly installed and configured right from the start

7. Monitor the processes and people to know what critical

RTO an RPO - metrics that are critical for your enterprise

webmaster — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:13:44 -0600

How long can your Enterprise afford to be without your data? With an Janco disaster recovery program, you never have to answer this question. Download this disaster recovery business continuity template table of contents and see how you can reduce RPOs and RTOs even more. With lost data being a competitive liability, there is no room for downtime in today's business world.

The DRP template includes everything needed to customize the Disaster Recovery Plan to fit your specific requirement.

Just as a disaster is an event that makes the continuation of normal functions impossible, a disaster recovery plan consists of the precautions taken so that the effects of a disaster will be minimized, and the organization will be able to either maintain or quickly resume mission-critical functions.

IBM enters cloud disaster recovery backup market

webmaster — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:58:44 -0600

IBM launched a collection of hardware, software, and services for large organizations looking to build private storage clouds that would offer access to all archived data, even if it's stored on tape.

In unveiling the Smart Business Storage Cloud, IBM said it also planned to launch a business-grade public cloud that would offer "flexible consumption models and a self-service user interface to fully abstract the technology from the end user." However, no timetable or pricing was offered.

Cloud storage is a broad term that typically applies to storage systems that are highly scalable and can be used internally or externally. The systems often use some form of clustered or grid-based storage.

IT organizations looking at cloud storage are typically under mandates to reduce escalating storage costs. In addition, they are faced with meeting increasing performance demands and dealing with massive data growth and overworked IT staff.

IBM's proposed solution to these problems for large organizations comprises the tech company's XIV storage arrays, BladeCenter servers, and General Parallel File System. The system would support multiple petabytes of data, including text, audio, and video, in a single global namespace.

Key to IBM's private-cloud offering is a new Information Archive, an integrated hardware and software system that provides a single unified platform for information retention. GPFS is a core component of the system, as is policy-based management software that automatically moves less active information to inexpensive storage systems, such as tape.

While making better use of tape, the system also retains access to data in those systems. "Using a customizable 'collections-based' approach, the archived data can be accessed in a private cloud computing environment, even if it's stored on tape media," IBM said in a statement. "This capability is critical as an increasing amount of data is expected to exist in archived formats."

IBM promises a "highly secure" environment that's built using a customer's existing security and authentication infrastructure.

IBM Global Business Services launched cloud-consulting offerings to complement the latest products. The services are geared toward helping organization build a business case for cloud computing, identify processes that would benefit the most, and define a roadmap for deployment.

IBM's entry into cloud storage is likely to present a serious challenge to other vendors, such as Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T, and Hewlett-Packard. A recent survey by Evans Data found that developers considered IBM as being able to provide the most secure private cloud environment, and was also rated high in reliability and ability to execute.

Inventory of IT Products and Services

webmaster — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:07:03 -0600

Today's IT environment is increasingly complex, with a wide array of new technologies filtering into the organization at many points - from centralized procurement to employee downloads and merger and acquisition activities. To make develop disaster recovery plans, business continuity plans, and make meaningful IT decisions, management needs relevant information about existing products as well as competitive alternatives and those that are planned for future deployment. The ideal solution is to have a comprehensive, unified IT products catalog, up-to-date with all relevant content and easily analyzed to support strategic decisions.

An IT products catalog combines detailed information about all of the hardware and software used by an organization, as well as relevant alternatives and planned technologies. It normalizes data (identifying the different variants and versions of software, for example), associates solutions with vendors, puts solutions into categories, and potentially adds related data, such as support information, power consumption, pricing and more.

Unfortunately, creating and maintaining a comprehensive IT products catalog is an enormous challenge. There are tens of thousands of vendors, millions of products, and an exponentially larger set of product attributes. As a result, most IT catalog attempts suffer from limited scope, out-of-date data, and the lack of relevant business context.

ISO 17799 - disaster recovery - business continuity defined

webmaster — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:32:09 -0600

SO 17799 is often used as a generic term to describe what are actually two different documents: ISO17799 (also ISO 27002), which is a set of security controls (a code of practice), and ISO 27001 (formerly BS7799-2), which is a standard 'specification' for an Information Security Management System (an ISMS).

ISO 17799 establishes guidelines and general principles for initiating, implementing, maintaining, and improving information security management in an organization. The objectives outlined provide general guidance on the commonly accepted goals of information security management. ISO/IEC 17799:2005 contains best practices of control objectives and controls in the following areas of information security management:

security policy;
organization of information security;
asset management;
human resources security;
physical and environmental security;
communications and operations management;
access control;
information systems acquisition, development and maintenance;
information security incident management;
business continuity management;
compliance.

The control objectives and controls in ISO/IEC 17799 are intended to be implemented to meet the requirements identified by a risk assessment. ISO/IEC 17799 is intended as a common basis and practical guideline for developing organizational security standards and effective security management practices, and to help build confidence in inter-organizational activities

Pandemics Need to be Accounted for in Business Continuity and Disaster Plans

webmaster — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:00:44 -0600

When the World Health Organization (WHO) raises the pandemic threat alert to Level 6 what affect does that have on business continuity? Enterprises will have to do more than tell sick employees to stay home and healthy ones to wash their hands.

When a pandemic strikes your enterprise the business continuity and disaster recovery plans need to allow IT workers to manage computer systems from home. There is no other alternative but to have them in the office.

A Level 6 alert means that company officials will be asked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to undertake a number of efforts to fight any pandemic -- including the appointment of a workplace Pandemic Coordinator or team.

The Pandemic Coordinator is responsible for monitoring employees to ensure they follow basic rules of hygiene, such as washing hands, and to make sure that breathing masks are available. If a worker becomes sick, the Pandemic Coordinator must ensure they go home.

The real issue is not sick employees, but an inability to get supplies and deliveries.

If your enterprise is in a locality that gets to pandemic levels of infection your enterprise is going to see issues like suppliers not being able to get deliveries to you because they are sick. This will be a regional issue, even if your organization is not directly affected by the flu.

Business Continuity Planning Key to Business Operations

webmaster — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:33:18 -0600

Business Continuity planning is key requirement for running any modern enterprise that takes its operations and its clients seriously. With so many potential disasters looming that can befall an organization at any time, it seems unwise not to take actions to prepare for and try to prevent the devastating impact of such catastrophes.

There is a multiplicity of benefits in planning for Business Continuity within your organization. Not only will your data, hardware, software, etc., be better protected, but the people that compose your organization will be better safeguarded should a disaster occur. In addition, employees will be informed and rehearsed as to what actions to take to immediately start the recovery process and ensure business continuity if disaster strikes.

Without this type of preparation any unexpected event can severely disrupt the operation, continuity, and effectiveness of your business. Disabling events can come in all shapes and varieties. They can vary from the more common calamities like hard drive corruption, building fires or flooding to the rarer, yet more severe and often longer lasting disruptions that can occur on a city-wide or even national basis; events such as disruptions in transport (oil crises, metro shut-downs, transport worker, strikes, etc.), infrastructure weakening from terrorist attacks, or even severe loss of staff due to illness like a pandemic flu. All of these strikes a blow at an organization's struggle for business continuity.

For smaller companies the impact of even lesser disasters can hit much harder. For example, unexpected non-availability of key workers alone could be catastrophic, potentially causing as much disruption to business continuity as technological hardship, especially if it occurs during the height of the company's busy season. If only one person is trained to do particular and/or essential tasks, their unexpected absence can severely disrupt productivity.

Business continutiy defined

webmaster — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:27:25 -0600

In the simplest of terms, it is good business for a company to secure its assets. CIO under the direction of CEOs and enterprise shareholders must be prepared to budget for and secure the necessary resources to support business continuity.

It is necessary that an appropriate administrative structure be created to effectively deal with crisis management. This will ensure that all concerned understand who makes decisions, how the decisions are implemented, and what the roles and responsibilities of participants are. Personnel used for crisis management should be assigned to perform these roles as part of their normal duties and not be expected to perform them on a voluntary basis. Regardless of the organization - for profit, not for profit, faith-based, non-governmental - its leadership has a duty to stakeholders to plan for its survival.

With the explosion of technology into every facet of the day-to-day business environment there is a need to define an effective infrastructure to support operating environment; have a strategy for the deployment and technology; and clearly define responsibilities and accountabilities for the use and application of technology.

The template comes as both a WORD document utilizing a CSS style sheet that is easily modifiable.

Internet down - earthquake damages undersea cables

webmaster — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:21:53 -0600

Internet service in China was disrupted for a third day today after an earthquake damaged undersea cables used by the countrys telecommunications operators.

Access to Web sites based in the U.S. and some Asian countries stopped or slowed on Monday afternoon for many Chinese Internet users. The partial service outage affected China Unicom and China Telecom, the countrys two major fixed-line operators.

Nine undersea cables were damaged off the southeast coast of Taiwan during the earthquake Monday and in undersea landslides caused by Typhoon Morakot last week, China Telecom said in a statement. The operator had been using five of those cables, including the APCN2 (Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2), it said.

The carrier is rerouting traffic through backup channels and working with foreign operators to rent or buy their international bandwidth.

China Unicom cables were damaged in the typhoon last week as well, but Internet service was not affected until a backup cable was damaged as well this week, the company said in a statement.

Data Backbone of Disaster Recovery

webmaster — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:46:57 -0600

Data is the backbone of every organization. No matter the business, industry, or size, reliable data access is essential to operations. As that data continues to grow exponentially, it is important to have a backup and recovery strategy that meets current business needs and has the flexibility to grow and change.

Protecting your data is vital to the survival and growth of your business. You must keep your systems and employees up and running - and productive - even as fast backup and restore processes are being completed. And, should a "worst-case scenario" occur, being prepared with an appropriate disaster recovery plan is essential.

The Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) can be used as a Disaster Planning template for any size of enterprise. The Disaster Recovery template and supporting material have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA compliant.

Email Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Requirements

webmaster — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:33:40 -0600

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for email requires at least six factors to be included when the plan is created. They are:

Emergency backup for primary mail server
Ability to send and receive emails
View some email history
Retain history during the recovery period
Spam and virus filtering
After the fact synchronization with primary email server

Based on working with thousands of customers, Janco Associates has developed a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Template that includes everything that you need to create a custom Disaster Plan.

You can download a full copy of the table of contents by going to http://www.e-janco.com/Register_drp.asp.

Business continuity after a terroist attack or a pandemic

webmaster — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:29:29 -0600

Most aspects of business continuity and disaster recovery planning apply to terrorist attacks and pandemics just as much as to fires, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other natural and manmade disasters. However, there are a number of areas that need to be re-visited because of the uniqueness of these types of interruptions.

Communication - While communication is important in any disaster recovery scenario, it is particularly critical in the event of a terrorist attack or a pandemic. Employees and their families may be personally threatened, and they may be exposed to rumors and panics, it is particularly important that they receive accurate, up-to-date information on safety and health issues. Employees also need detailed information on company policies and procedures for working in the new environment, and open communication channels to company officials to help resolve personal and work-related issues in high-stress situations.
Security and Connectivity - Enterprises must plan to provide secure and reliable access to corporate networks for employees who work in their homes, hotels, or other remote locations. Administrators must have a plan for distributing software to remote computers, ensuring security on computers outside of the corporate firewall, and providing backup and data encryption capabilities to mitigate the risk of mobile devices with sensitive data being lost or stolen.
Collaboration and Re-Engineered Processes - Planners and developers must re-engineer business processes so they can continue without face-to-face interaction between employees.

DisasterRecovery and Business Continuity Planning Considerations for Email

webmaster — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:33:36 -0600

Disaster recovery and business continuity planning considerations are crucial when deploying any email system. Not only is it important to have a plan in the event of a local outage, but careful consideration should also be given to the chance of an entire site failure. In the event of a disaster, the first system that needs to be brought online is communications. E-mail is the ideal method of communication, but users need access and the environment has to be able to withstand a major service interruption.

Issues include, failing over to the backup site is a manual process and most systems do not include a mechanism to fail back to the primary site. Getting the primary site back online is a labor- and network-intensive process. Another is that most email systems do not utilize compression, which results in additional network bandwidth consumption.

What to do after you have created a Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Plan

webmaster — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:20:15 -0600

Now that you have a disaster recovery plan in place, you still have work to do.

Test your disaster recovery plan at least quarterly. Simply having a plan in place is not enough. Develop and regularly (quarterly) test your plan so that the first time it is executed is not during an emergency. Remember to test under realistic conditions and make the plan robust enough to address extended recovery that may require utilization of new facilities, relocation of staff and involvement of outside personnel.
Review and reassign responsibilities at least monthly. Factor in changes to your organization caused by recent layoffs and restructurings. Assign new responsibilities to employees based on the current organizational structure and available resources. Test this updated plan to ensure all tools and protocols are in place to operate during a disaster, reaching out to all parts of the organization and employee family members as well as vendors, government agencies and emergency responders.
Update your notification system at least monthly. Critical during any potential interruption, notification should be an integral part of an organizations disaster recovery plan. Make sure all contact numbers are up-to-date, allowing the organization to get in touch with key personnel in the event of an emergency. This will also help prioritize methods of communication and track which employees have received messages.
Know where staff will work if you lose your facility. Employees are the heart of an organization; however, many human resources aspects are frequently overlooked in disaster recovery planning. Businesses must identify alternate locations where employees can go in the event a primary work location is unavailable and address the physical safety and psychological well-being of employees. Assign backup roles for the inevitable times when key players are not available or missing, and time-sensitive actions need to be taken. Employ cross training to have alternative contacts ready to go.
If a Disaster is DECLARED EXECUTE your plan. If an organization has access to hot or cold back-up sites, a common mistake is to wait too long before declaring an emergency and relocating personnel. If an organization is located in an area for which a government evacuation order has been issued, it should declare and relocate immediately.
Document your technology infrastructure. Develop procedures for technical recovery scripts that will be deployed to help get your IT infrastructure up and running. Make the scripts comprehensive and easy to understand so people who are not familiar with them can easily follow along.
Update your vendor list at least monthly. Strictly enforce change management and control processes to help ensure vendor contacts are current so vital services will be quickly available when needed.
Review the use of contractors and outsourced facilities. In the event of a disaster, will your vendors be able to perform their roles in supporting your critical technical infrastructure and business processes? Consider looking at secondary providers as a precaution. Take time to evaluate whether support or maintenance contracts need to be extended or have levels of support modified.
Review and test readiness and completeness of offsite data storage. Paper records and backup tapes may be totally lost, destroyed or unavailable. Develop contingencies in the event delivery of offsite-stored data is delayed. Investigate using electronic media - through disk-to-disk backup - to help safeguard and provide backup information.
Have a current plan in place to re-build your critical servers. Should a disaster occur, re-building servers from the ground up consumes time and stretches internal IT resources. Consider working with a third-party provider that can simplify these processes by rebuilding your operating systems on its own servers - enabling a speedy and more cost-effective recovery.

Disaster Planning Protects Assets

webmaster — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:09:23 -0600

Disaster planning is an essential component of preserving your enterprises assets. With a written disaster plan, your enterprise can reduce the risk of disaster and minimize losses. The Janco Disaster Recovery Plan Template is perfect for small and medium-sized institutions that do not have in-house preservation staff. The Janco Disaster Recovery Plan Template is also valuable for large enterprises that need to develop separate but related plans for multiple buildings, locations, or branches.

The Janco Disaster Recovery Plan Template can help you create a plan for disaster prevention and response. Enter data into the online template to create a customized disaster plan for your enterprise. This plan will help you:

Prevent or mitigate disasters,
Prepare for the most likely emergencies,
Respond quickly to minimize damage if disaster strikes, and
Recover effectively from disaster while continuing to provide enterprise services to your customers and clients

Email Outages Average Almost 1 Hour Per Month

webmaster — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:21:24 -0600

A recent Osterman Research survey found that in mid-sized and large organizations, e-mail systems experience a mean of 53 minutes of unplanned downtime during a typical month. That means that during a one-year period, a typical e-mail system will be down for 10.6 hours. This does not include the scheduled maintenance or other scheduled outages that happen on a regular basis. A company considering e-mail recovery or continuity needs to understand the importance of e-mail and its tolerance for e-mail outages. Decision makers need to understand exactly what impact an e-mail outage can have on their business, although many of them do not understand the full impact of an outage.

How does consolication impact Disaster Planning

webmaster — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:53:43 -0600

In an effort to drive profitability and rein in costs, businesses are continually seeking to improve operational capabilities. Primary to this objective are today's burgeoning network infrastructures, which are continually being asked to do more. Applications are becoming more sophisticated and mission-critical. More software is written to take advantage of dynamic IP parameters. In addition, an economic slowdown has companies relying on network-based technologies that reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and save money. Consolidation is another trend bolstering IT efficiencies. Servers and storage are often the first affected by a consolidation initiative. However, data center consolidation is just as important in terms of optimizing infrastructure security, compliance and integrity. The flourishing area of unified communications (UC) offers further testimony to the increased significance of the network. UC provides substantial benefit to the enterprise in terms of capabilities that allow staff to collaborate in real time, access critical information and communicate seamlessly with coworkers and customers -- regardless of location.

Remote and Branch Office Disaster Planning

webmaster — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:56:08 -0600

Distributed data at Remote and Branch Offices (ROBO) continues to grow substantially year after year. Leaving this data unprotected or inadequately protected poses serious business risks for organizations. Protection approaches require careful consideration as factors such as technical complexity, capital and operational costs, and expertise of personnel must be taken into account.

Local disk-based data protection strategies improve backup efficiency and reliability over tape-based ones. Consolidation of edge data to the core data center may introduce further efficiencies. Data de-duplication can drive both backup-to-disk and consolidation adoption.

Business Risk makes Disaster Planning More Complex

webmaster — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:51:45 -0600

Whether you are a for profit business, a bank, a government agency, hospital the risk of compromising private information is very high. Business relies heavily on technology today and business risk often is technology dependent. The possibility of litigation is part of business. There has always been a risk in doing business, but because technology and today's business are so intertwined, business risk has a higher threat level. This has prompted many to encrypt workstations and mobile computers in order to protect critical business data.

If you have rolled out encryption, how do you maintain your IT service quality when the hard disk drive fails? How do you plan and prepare for a data loss when the users computer is encrypted? These are all issues that should be considered when putting together a data disaster plan. In addition, data recovery, one of the more common missing elements of a disaster recovery plan, should also be factored in because it can serve as the Hail Mary attempt when all other options have been exhausted.

Backing up with an Outsource Provider may not be the Right Answer

webmaster — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:03:46 -0600

Just because your disaster recovery business continuity plan includes a plan for backing up your data to a outsource provider does not mean that your enterprise is safe.

Carbonite, EMC's Mozy, and Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) are providers in the growing online backup market. The services let consumers and enterprises back up their data over the Internet for later retrieval if a hard drive or another component should fail. Carbonite targets its service toward home and small-business users.

Carbonite is suing storage vendor Promise Technology, saying repeated failures of Promise gear have caused "significant data loss" at Carbonite.

In the lawsuit, Carbonite said it bought more than $3 million (US Dollars) worth of Promise VTrak Raid products beginning in 2006. In several incidents starting in January 2007, the service provider suffered data loss because the Promise gear failed to support recovery from physical drive errors and array errors. The data losses caused "substantial damage" to Carbonite's business, the company alleged.

Email and Calendaring Critical to Enterprise Operations

webmaster — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:35:35 -0600

Mail and calendaring are playing an increasingly critical role in day-to-day business communication and work flow. Mailing, scheduling, task assignment, shared resource
allocation and file storage are often done with a mail server hosted at an enterprises data center. An outage of that server can disrupt business workflow by making it difficult for employees to communicate with each other as well as with customers and suppliers. An organization's IT department is also severely impacted when "fire drills" are necessary to bring services back online quickly. An outage of the email server can severely disrupt normal business operations and result in significant costs to an organization. A Company's reputation can also be damaged and revenue affected by loss of prospects and disruption of the billing system. The companys stock price may even be affected. It is crucial that email administrators be aware of the possible interruptions caused by local or regional disasters as well as scheduled downtime and have a plan to mitigate the impact.

The types of issues that the administrators need to plan for are

Component failure
Software defects
Operator error
Malicious users
System outages
System maintenance
Local disaster
Regional disaster

Tape Backup Puts Companies at Risk

webmaster — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:02:14 -0600

Tape backup has been the traditional solution for backing up data on computer systems since the late 1960s. While tape backup remains a viable long-term archiving method for most large and small organizations, many issues limit its usefulness.

First, with the huge growth in data volumes, mandated requirements for longer retention and faster access, and greater reliance on data and technology backup windows are shrinking. Second, because backing up is not easy or quick, many organizations do not backup often enough to protect themselves. Third, tape is not the most reliable medium hardware failures, media failures, and human errors are common. Tape management is a constant IT headache and administrative costs are high.

Organizations now are looking for new solution that provide a continuum of protection schemes that include storage array-based data protection, remote replication for recovery after a failure or disaster, and business continuity during outages and common IT maintenance procedures.

Disaster Plan Quick Action Steps

webmaster — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:52:33 -0600

Every IT manager knows the importance of having an effective and fast disaster recovery (DR) plan. Organizations without an adequate plan may find themselves out of business quickly after experiencing a major disaster. Organizations that ensure survival following a disaster understand the basics of creating a good plan.

A disaster recovery is a response to a declared disaster or a regional disaster. It is the restoration or recovery of an entire Agent computer. A disaster recovery plan describes how an organization is to deal with potential disasters. Just as a disaster is an event that makes the continuation of normal functions impossible, a disaster recovery plan consists of the precautions taken so that the effects of a disaster will be minimized, and the organization will be able to either maintain or quickly resume mission-critical functions. Typically, disaster recovery planning involves an analysis of business processes and continuity needs; it may also include a significant focus on disaster prevention.

The Disaster Recovery Planning Template (DRP) can be used for any sized enterprise. The template and supporting material have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant. The complete package includes:

Disaster Recovery Plan Template
Business and IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire
Work Plan

Keywords for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

webmaster — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:38:38 -0600

The keywords for disaster recovery and business continuity (DR/BC)are copies and distance. For DR/BC, you must have more than one data copy, and copies must be stored some distance away from the primary data center on different physical machines - remote replication is the standard for DR/BC.

Deciding how and where to replicate depends on your needs and your available locations. Some organizations will replicate from the primary data center to one remote location; others replicate the same data to multiple locations. Organizations with branch offices often replicate from each branch to a central DR site, and then backup data from there.

Configuring DR/BC implementation depends on two important factors that each organization must identify - recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). RTO defines how quickly data can be restored. Some operations and data types can tolerate very little time to recover, while others can survive longer delays. RPO defines how much data loss can be tolerate,d and that determines how often data is replicated. Many organizations define different RTOs and RPOs across the enterprise - uniformity is not important as long as you can easily and affordably match data types to protection levels.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning Move to Remote Sites

webmaster — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:22:28 -0600

Business continuity, Disaster Recovery, Redundancy and Uptime -- these are no longer terms restricted to a data center in the enterprise. They now include every desktop, smartphone, and remote processing site.

The question of whether or not an enterprise can manage disaster is perhaps an incomplete one considering humans have been given the will and desire to survive through the most challenging circumstances. In order to maintain the continuity of business, it is essential to be able to have the necessary backup or secondary switch that you can turn on, and keep going.

Before selecting a Disaster Recovery strategy, the Disaster Recovery planner should refer to the company's business continuity plan which should specify the key metrics of Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for various business processes. The metrics specified for the business processes must then be mapped to the underlying IT systems and infrastructure that support those processes.

While it is important to have Disaster RPOs and RTOs in place, here is something to think about: what if the critical data you are currently using becomes corrupt? What if someone accidentally deletes some portion? Well, the IT manager will head over into the most recent backup data, and simply recover. But because when there is no crisis as such, the data backup is usually done on a 24-hour, daily basis, think about the situation you are creating for the organization -- the daily RTO and RPO back is up 24-24 (24 hours each), while an enterprise may define the disaster RTO and RPO to be 4-4. In the event of an unplanned incident which is not necessarily a disaster, you cannot get to the data until 24 hours later, which means that unless you 'declare' the organization to be in a state of disaster, you will have lost 24 hours worth of data!

Disaster Recovery Planning Template News Feed Launched

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:37 -0600

The Disaster Recovery Planning Template dot com RSS News feed has just been launched. The focus of the feed is Disaster Recovery Planning and Security related issues.

This feed joins the IT management series of feeds published by Janco Associates, Inc. The feeds include:

ITSM Template Updated

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:33 -0600

The IT Productivity Center, a division of Janco Associates, Inc. announced an update to IT Service Management Template. IT Service Management (ITSM) is defined as part of a rapidly accepted standard of best practices known as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). The IT Service Management template joins the IT Productivity Center's CIO and IT Productivity series of tools and templates which include their popular Sarbanes Oxley Compliance Resource Kit and Disaster Recovery Plan Template. The ITSM update can be found at http://www.itproductivity.org/itsm.htm.

Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco and the IT Productivity Center said "IT infrastructure productivity is the core of our firm's practice. We have created a set of tools to improve the productivity and quality of service provided by the IT function. With the IT Service Management Template and our Sarbanes Oxley Compliance Resource Kit enterprises of all sizes can quickly implement best practices." In addition he said. "... the IT Service Management template is now included in the CIO Productivity Bundle." The CIO Productivity Bundle, which is Sarbanes-Oxley compliant can be found at http://www.itproductivity.org/offer_cio.htm.

The IT Service Management Template ( http://www.itproductivity.org/itsm.htm ) contains policies, standards, procedures and metrics for Change Control, Help Desk and Service Request processing. The ITSM Template also contains the IT Productivity Center's Business and IT Impact Questionnaire, a Change Control Request Form and an Internet Use Approval Form. The template comes as a word document which can be used as a template to create customized procedures for any size enterprise.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Resource Kit (http://www.itproductivity.org/SOX.htm ) which was released in January now has a Platinum Edition which contains the IT Service Management Template.

Janco also announced the activation of its new web site www.it-toolkits.com. The site provides productivity tools for IT and the Chief Information Officer in particular. Included are Janco's Browser Study, CIO Productivity Kit, Disaster Recovery Template, Security Template, IT Salary Survey, IT Job Descriptions, and Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Resource Kit.

File Sharing Network Shut Down

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:31 -0600

Swiss and Belgian police have shut down a major component of the eDonkey file-sharing network, used mainly to trade copies of copyrighted movies and music.

Razorback 2 was the biggest server on the eDonkey peer-to-peer (P2P) network, which transfers data from user to user. Music companies have blamed P2P piracy for causing a drastic downturn in sales, and Hollywood is trying to prevent a similar impact on the movie business.

"Swiss authorities arrested the site's operator at his residence in Switzerland this morning and searched his home," the MPA said in a statement. "At the same time, on the authority of a local magistrate, Belgian police seized the site's servers located at an Internet hosting center in Zaventem near Brussels."

As of last year, eDonkey was estimated to have up to 3 million users spread over 100 to 200 servers. Razorback2 was the most popular server, used by about 1 million users.

One-Third of Techies Don't Use Passwords

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:26 -0600

Security-conscious IT pro, heal thyself: A Pointsec Mobile Technologies survey has found that one-third of IT pros are not using passwords or any other security to protect data on their smartphones or PDAs. And one-tenth of respondents said they had corporate info, PINs and other important data stored on the devices. Though those who hadn't backed up their info worried that they'd lose "everything" if their device was stolen or lost, they apparently choose to live dangerously. Just 40 percent who had a device stolen or lost reported it to the police, believing that it would be a waste of time and money to do so.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Template Released

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:23 -0600

The Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Template Version 4.0 was just released. It is a MS Word document that can be used as a DRP - BCP template for any enterprise. The template and supporting material have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA compliant. The Disaster Planning Template includes:

Disaster Recovery Plan and Business Continuity Template
Business and IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire
Work Plan

New with version 4.0 are:

Vendor Disaster Recovery Questionnaire
Vendor Phone List Form Updated
Key Customer Notification Form
Critical Resources to be Retrieved Form
Business Continuity Off-Site Materials Form
Department Disaster Recovery Planning Workbook

Go to http://www.e-janco.com/drp.htm

Wi-Fi Proves Itself in a Disaster Area

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:20 -0600

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the only communication system that had not broken down was the wireless mesh network deployed in the downtown area to support surveillance cameras credited with reducing the citys prestorm violent-crime rate.

Today it still performs police duties, but as the lone public communications system left in the city, it also carries VoIP traffic that is the lifeline for many city businesses.

The storm wiped out wireline phone service and cellular networks, and those that it didn't destroy outright couldn't be kept up because the city could not get fuel to the backup generators needed to keep the networks running, Meffert told an audience at a session during Spring VON 2006 this week.

Next Disaster Requires Culture of Preparedness

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:17 -0600

At the center of the recent White House report "Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned," there is a call to foster a new, robust culture of preparedness.

The challenge comes after the report details the long list of tragedies that last years deadly hurricane wrought, including more than 1,330 deaths and $96 billion in property damage. In terms of communications, 38 centers that normally handled 911 calls failed, while 3 million customers lost phone service.

The report urges a wide variety of players to build this new culture, including myriad federal agencies and tens of thousands of state and local emergency first responder agencies. And it calls on private citizens and the private sector to take part.

Long-term cell use raises brain tumor risk

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:14 -0600

The use of mobile phones over a long period of time can raise the risk for brain tumors, a new Swedish study said, contradicting the conclusions of other researchers.

The Dutch Health Council, in an overview of research from around the world, last year found no evidence radiation from mobile phones and TV towers was harmful. A four-year British survey released in January showed no link between regular, long-term use of cell phones and the most common type of tumor.

However, researchers at the Swedish National Institute for Working Life said they looked at the mobile phone use of 905 people between the age of 20 and 80 who had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and found a link.

IT Service Management SOA Policy Template Released by Janco

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:11 -0600

Janco has just released its IT Service Management SOA Policy Template. The Service-Oriented Architecture policy template is an 107 page document that contains standards, policies and procedures, metrics and service level agreement for the help desk, change control, service requests, blog / personal web site, and travel and off-site meetings. It also contains a Change Request Form, Business and IT Impact Questionnaire, and an Internet Use Approval Form. The template is availalable in Microsoft Word format or PDF file.

Blog Policy Template Released

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:08 -0600

Janco Associates released its Blog and Personal Web Site Policy.

The Blog and Personal Web Site Template includes a detailed Policy statement with specific guidelines for blog and web site participation, security standards, and Blog Policy Compliance Agreement form which all employees, contractors, sub-contactors and affiliates should complete. This template can be purchased on its own and is included it the IT Service Management Template.

In a recent AMA survey it was found that only 9 percent have policies governing personal blogging on company time, 7 percent have policies on business blogging and appropriate content, and even fewer (3 percent) retain blog content. The risks faced by enterprises of all sizes include copyright infringement, sexual harassment and trade secret theft not to mention the drain on employee productivity.

Ripping and replacing can be a September budget booster

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:05 -0600

(Computerworld) -- September is a critical budget month for a lot of organizations, and IT groups are scrambling to save every dollar possible. Some IT veterans say you need look no further than your own network's aging technologies and manual processes to cobble together some last-minute savings or get a jump on the next budget year.

They recommend ripping and replacing any older technology and manual procedures that drain help desk resources, waste valuable storage space and cost ongoing licensing fees. For many of these network dinosaurs, there are viable replacements that allow you to streamline management and support, consolidate resources and free up expensive real estate. Here are a few of their recommendations.

Morocco jails two over Zotob worm

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:56:02 -0600

A Moroccan court on Tuesday jailed two men for one and two years for unleashing computer worms that disrupted networks across the United States, court officials and lawyers said.

The court in Sale, twin city to the Moroccan capital Rabat, convicted 19-year-old science student Farid Essebar and his friend Achraf Bahloul, 22, for their role in creating and spreading the Zotob worm last year.

Moroccan authorities said the two men had one accomplice in Turkey, who was named earlier by the FBI as Atilla Ekici.

Zotob caused computer outages at more than 100 U.S. companies, including major media outlets like CNN and The New York Times. But it did not create widespread havoc like software programs such as SQL Slammer and MyDoom.

DRP That Does Not Work

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:55:59 -0600

(InfoWorld) -- CompUSA and the Dummies books are teaching users just enough of the tech alphabet to spell trouble. A network that was severely hacked by someone who came in from the outside and deleted the main Exchange message store. Firewall logs had gotten the local IT admin nowhere, so we were called in to do a little snooping around. Another guy on the team had the sense to run AirSnort. He found a wide open Linksys wireless access point in about six seconds.

The internal admin insisted there was no wireless running anywhere on the network. It took some sneaker netting, but we found the rogue AP in a senior executives office about 20 minutes later. Seemed he saw how cheap they were at the local CompUSA and decided to plug one into the secondary network port in his office so he could use his notebook wireless instead of the wired connection because no wires -- looked better.

Another problem in this vein is USB. Being able to plug in a peripheral and achieve working status without the need to install drivers has rapidly spread the popularity of personal peripherals. You do not want to get yourself get sucked into supporting things such as printers that are not on your official purchase list -- or external hard disks, DVD drives, sound systems, and even monitors.

Nor do you want the security risk of an employee plugging in a gig or two of empty space into any workstations USB port and copying important corporate information. Source code, accounting data, and historical records all can be copied quickly and then walk out in somebodys hip pocket.

Solution: Let employees know what is and is not acceptable as corporate peripherals. Keep an accurate asset record of what belongs to the IT department so you can more easily find or ignore the stuff that does not. And if data theft is a problem, think about protecting yourself by disabling USB drives, uninstalling CD-RW drives, or similar measures. The work you do now can save your bacon later.

Moral: Asset management is not just for the anal. Knowing exactly what is supposed to be on your network is a key step to solving a wide variety of IT mysteries.

Avoiding Data Migration Delays

webmaster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:55:56 -0600

(Computerworld) -- As a technical matter, migrating data from an old computer system to a new one should be straightforward. There are common industry practices that can help, such as running field-mapping and conversion scripts, and using extract, transform and load tools. So why does data migration so often turn good IT projects into bad ones, with embarrassing delays that drag on for weeks or months?

Delays are often the result of getting off on the wrong foot failing to adequately plan the approach to data migration at the outset. The technical issues can be complex, but at least they are predictable. It is the nontechnical strategy that often causes delays down the road.