A Primer on How to Create a Bullet-Proof Disaster Recovery Plan for the Entire Organization
Minutes after the first of two planes plunged into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Inc., the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, declared a disaster and rushed its disaster recovery plan into place with the help of SunGard Recovery Solutions, a third-party disaster recovery service provider. At the last time, about seven other tenants in the World Trade Center followed suit and contacted SunGard.
The events of September have made disaster recovery planning rise to the top of every organization's IT department priority list. Until the first attack on the World Trade Center in
…show more content…
A disaster can strike at any time. In fact, there are more than 35 types of disasters, ranging from the most common power outages -- to the most catastrophic earthquakes. In essence, a disaster includes any type of interruption of service that results from some force beyond the organization's control. Disaster recovery provides systematic procedures for how to react to and how to recover from that ominous external or internal force. Disaster recovery planning, which complements business continuity and contingency planning, ensures the ability of the organization to function effectively if an unforeseen event severely disrupted normal operations.
The following template will help the key individuals in your organization to go through the thought process for preparing a disaster recovery plan, which's aimed at restoring all critical business functions, rather than disparate functions such as the data center, alone.
Gather Information
Organize the Project
A successful initiative of this magnitude requires these things: support from senior management associated with the organization, a dedicated disaster recovery team whose members have knowledge of critical business systems, and a well thought out planning strategy and testing strategy. The disaster recovery coordinator, working with the appropriate team leaders, should perform steps 3 to 7. Senior executives
A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) focuses on the recovery of IT systems, applications, and data in the
Tragic events that cause damage to property and life may destroy the social, cultural and economic life of a community. Communities must be engaged in the various phases from prevention to recovery to build disaster resilient communities. In order to do this, there must be a disaster preparedness plan in place that involves multiple people in various roles.
Disaster Recovery team had previously prepared Disaster preparedness plan, a Backup and Recovery Policy, and a Business Impact Assessment.
mitigate these points assessments will be made in how to best mitigate the failure and what would need to be done to
Presentation regarding the university’s Disaster Recovery Plan/Enterprise Continuity Plan including: basic structures; roles within the DRP/ECP plan; areas within a company if addressed improve resilience to catastrophic events, and an employee awareness campaign.
Editor’s Note: This Chapter is the continuation of an adaptation of a state plan for disaster preparation and response. In total, the original chapter comprises Chapters 1, 14, 16-18.
Additionally, the preparation phase covers all fundamentals of an incident response plan, reports interaction among basics, and increases to emergency response planning at some point in the life of an incident in order to develop the necessary trust relationships that will be fully exercised during the stress of a real crisis. According to Whitman (2012) “The Disaster Recovery Plan Similar in structure to the IR plan, the DR plan provides detailed guidance in the event of a disaster. It is organized by the type or nature of the disaster, and specifies recovery procedures during and after each type of disaster. It also provides details on the roles and responsibilities of the people involved in the disaster recovery effort, and identifies the personnel and agencies that must be notified. Just as the IR plan must be tested, so must the DR plan, using the same testing mechanisms.” (P. 231). Many of the same principles of incident response apply to disaster recovery such as fundamentals must be clearly established, roles and responsibilities must be visibly outlined, someone must initiate the alert schedule and notify key personnel, someone must have the responsibility of the documentation of the disaster and only if it is possible, attempts must be made to moderate the impact of the disaster on the operations of the organization.
Every business and organization can experience a serious incident which can prevent it from continuing normal operations. This can happen any day at any time. The potential causes are many and varied: flood, explosion, computer malfunction, accident, grievous act... the list is endless.
Disasters have become an inevitable part of businesses and organizations as well. They not only have a major effect on business and organizational continuity; they also result to an overhaul in organizational operational mechanisms (Awasthy, 2009). It is for this reason that many organizations and business resort to preparing business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans that will facilitate better disaster management in future. Effective disaster recovery plans are important to every business and organization (Thejendra, 2008).
The purpose for this Disaster Recovery Plan is to primarily maintain all of the information and material appropriate to the initiative’s ability to survive a disaster, and to document all the phases that the initiative will take if a disaster does occur. The first priority of the TC-MACT if a disaster does occur is to prevent the loss of lives. In order to move to the second step, we must guarantee all personnel and other members on the premises are safe and secure. Once we can guarantee the safety of individuals, the next objective of the TC-MACT will be to ratify the steps outlined in this DRP to bring all of the agencies, groups and departments back to business-as-usual as quickly as possible. Although CERT programs vary in some ways, they all share the potential to offer significant benefits to their sponsoring organizations, their communities and their citizens. As with any activity, there is risk.
Disaster recovery is the process of an organisation uses to recover access the data, and also hardware that are needed to recollect the performance to be in normal position after a disaster occurs. While disaster recovery plans have to be focus in every aspect in any organisation and bringing the gap closure after destruction it can be like data, hardware, or software have been lost and the manpower that composes much of any organisation.
Disaster Recovery Planning is the critical factor that can prevent headaches or nightmares experienced by an organization in times of disaster. Having a disaster recovery plan marks the difference between organizations that can successfully manage crises with minimal cost, effort and with maximum speed, and those organizations that cannot. By having back-up plans, not only for equipment and network recovery, but also detailed disaster recovery plans that precisely outline what steps each person involved in recovery efforts should undertake, an organization can improve their recovery time and minimize the disrupted time for their normal business functions. Thus it is essential that disaster recovery plans are carefully laid
Owning a business can have many stressors day to day. When starting a business there is a lot of planning and preparation involved. Many small businesses are owners who have put their own money into the business and look at it as an investment. Unfortunately with all the planning that goes into starting a business, one thing is often over looked. Most of the time the “what ifs”, are not part of the planning stage. One reason for this is that people do not like to think of the bad things that could or may happen. So with all the time and planning put into starting a business why not put some extra thought into a plan B if a disaster strikes? This plan B could be a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan. Business continuity plans are an essential part of the modern day business. There are so many potential disasters for small businesses that could seize the production or even close the business down for good. A recent study from Gartner Inc., found that “90% of companies that experience data loss go out of business within two years. It also found that 80% of company owners have not thought about how they would keep their businesses up and running if a data disaster occurs.” According to the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, “about 60 percent of businesses that experience a major disaster such as a fire close
The team prioritized investments for disaster recovery initiatives, and in conjunction with business unit leaders, designed a tiered model highlighting recovery priorities. These priorities were validated with IT infrastructure leaders to help ensure alignment. As failover
The effective contingency plan should only include the high-priority items and it should be as simple as possible. The purpose for the contingency plans is to response quickly when there are changes of an organization’s current strategy. For example, the predefined strategy is based on some assumptions about the economy but the outcome is not what the organization assumed, the contingency plan can support the organization to react promptly. The effective contingency planning includes a seven step process. First, Identify both beneficial and unfavorable events that could possibly derail the strategy. This step includes the development of the formal contingency planning policy statement in order to provide it to relevant stakeholders the authority and guideline that required developing the effective contingency plan. Policy will be published when executive confirms it. To gather the high-level business requirements, define scope and allocating project resources. Second, Specify trigger points and calculate about when contingent events are likely to occur. It involves the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify threat scenarios, prioritize key business processes and critical systems for business continuity. Executive approval on those choices of the critical business functions and the priority to recover during the disaster. Third, Assess the