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How To Create A Disaster Recovery Plan Essay

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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.

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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

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