The Disaster Recovery Plan And A Business Continuity Plan

A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) focuses on the recovery of IT systems, applications, and data in the

Disaster Recovery team had previously prepared Disaster preparedness plan, a Backup and Recovery Policy, and a Business Impact Assessment.

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.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR or BC/DR) are closely related practices that describe an organization's preparation for unforeseen risks to continued operations. The trend of combining business continuity and disaster recovery into a single term has resulted from a growing recognition that both business executives and technology executives need to be collaborating closely instead of developing plans in isolation.

The purpose of the disaster recovery plan is to ensure the process of recovering mission critical systems has a plan of action in case of a disaster. The disaster recovery plan makes sure all the steps to bring up the critical to less critical systems

Good Business Continuity Planning starts with being proactive. That means taking concrete steps to plan for an incident much before it actually strikes. There is no one single approach that fits for all types of incidents as no two emergencies are identical. Much of business continuity planning varies based on the size of the company, company’s line of business, and the locations of the company, customers and suppliers.

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.

According to the article, How to Successfully Implement a Disaster Recovery Plan on ameinfo.com, “most major organizations are running critical enterprise applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). These applications are integrated across the enterprise to such an extent that they touch everyone from employees and customers to suppliers and partners, and they are the backbone and life-blood of the organization” (ameinfo.com, 2003). Implementing a good disaster recovery plan is highly imperative to ensure business continuity. However, one of the biggest challenges is convincing business leaders to recognize the need and fund the change. An organization should be prepared for all forms of disasters and catastrophes and have a disaster recovery plan in place that will allow the system should function normally under any of these circumstances. This alone will provide a huge competitive advantage and allow the organization to remain functional during potential down times. Natural or any other form of disaster is something that cannot be predicted and the company should be well prepared to deal with any untoward incidents. Any business utilizing IT systems should have proper backup and restoration methods to reset the system in case of emergencies.

The significance of each major phase of continuity planning merits attention because each phase contributes to building all four areas of business continuity: disaster recovery, business recovery, business resumption, and contingency planning:

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).

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

Disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a clearly defined and documented plan of action for use at the time of a crisis. Typically a plan will cover all the key personnel, resources, services and actions required to implement and manage the DR process (comission, 2014).

Contingency planners are now asserting that contingency planning is a value-added component that can be a competitive advantage in the marketplace as well a means of helping organizations save money. Processes that are deeply analyzed in terms of continuity will usually be more secure, and new ways of working may emerge to help streamline operations. Contingency planning can be useful when forging alliances with external organizations or during acquisition phases. Contingency planning should be part of an organization’s quality cycle as well. “Business continuity and disaster recovery have gained somewhat in the eyes of top corporate management since the start of the 1990s. As the industry has slowly evolved from what could almost have been called a ‘black art’ to something starting to resemble a disciplined science, basic business principles have begun to become increasingly relevant” (Rothstein, 2003, p. 1).