Basic HTML Version
Page 12
Page 13
As a Technology professional, business owner, or a
CIO, have you ever asked yourself these questions;
What will I do in the event I experience total data-
loss? Or, do I have a plan to recover and continue
my business if we should ever experience malicious
destruction of our company data?
Over the years we have heard of and seen many
companies and corporate giants fall due to data loss,
weak backup systems or poor planning for business
continuity. With this we ask ourselves, how could they
have managed to not put these simple precautions
in place? Is it that they haven’t put them in place or
is it that they simply did not think this could have
happened to them?
Many professionals who are in-charge of I.T.
infrastructures seem to be ineffective when it comes
to convincing management of the importance of
having a workable and executable Disaster Recovery
Plans (DRP). DRP’s should be considered the same
way as your Business Insurance Plan. You have it, you
hardly have a need to use it, but when you do find
the need to use it, you are happy you had it in the first
place.
A DRP is also often seen in medium to large
companies as not necessary or too costly to just have
such a process studied and documented, and this
is even more evident in small and micro businesses.
A DRP, as its name suggests, is and should be,
considered one of the main pillars of any organization.
What does this mean? Baring no size. Why? Over time,
businesses accumulate data and data represents
information, which in the long run is used for
historical and reference points. In its current use, data
represents orders, customer information, accounting
information, employee data and the list goes on. Total
data loss = crippled business.
A DRP as a management tool should be considered
through all classes of business and management
should pay special attention to every detail of these
plans. DRP’s if developed correctly, can also determine
after any disaster, whether a business has a chance
to successfully restart or has a high mortality rate.
Successes are self-explanatory; however, failures can
range from displacement of employees, customer loss
due to failure to fill orders, financial losses due to the
inability to produce accurate financial information,
overall information integrity and in most cases total
shutdown of the organization experiencing this
disaster.
Why should businesses take DRP’s seriously
and why should one be developed for every
class of business? Simple! Starting over.
Let us take a look at a scenario. ACME Company
has twelve employees which represents twenty
years of work and
data gathering.
ACME Company has a
backup system which
works perfectly and
management ensures
that frequent mock
restores are done
successfully. However, a disaster strikes, whether it
be fire, water, malicious destruction of property, you
name it, it happened. ACME Company now has to
reconstruct its operation and get back to business as
usual.
For ACME Company, they have never thought of the
possibility that this would or could ever happen,
however it did. The first questions which come to
the minds of the CEO or the company principals
are, what do we do now? How do we mobilize our
employees to bring back our operational capacity
to 30% or 40%? After all these questions the million
dollars thought would be, I need to make a plan to
get us restarted. At that moment, all sorts of ideas
will present themselves, and some might just work,
however, could there have been a more effective and
streamlined way to get this done? Yes. Since there
were no DRP implemented, the process of recovery
for ACME Company might become tedious and the
possibility of task overlapping becomes present. This
in turn can lead to frustration and further delay the
recovery efforts.
Having a DRP removes these uncertainties and gives
the person(s) in charge of the recovery process control
over manpower and resources. With DRP’s in place,
timelines are set and met based on the resources
allocation and the percentage operational goals set
out. During each stage of the DRP, when activated,
sample testing can be done to measure the progress
and indicate whether additional resources is needed
to get the task completed.
DRP’s should clearly identify several disasters
possibilities and should consider disasters based on
region, class of business, equipment and resources
used by the company, and the importance of data
etc. DRP’s should also be maintained and updated
based on a schedule and should also be based on
any changes within the business. In addition, areas
of your DRP should be tested over time and areas of
weaknesses, if found, corrected. Failure to keep DRP’s
up-to-date and current will render them useless or
partially inadequate to fully restore the company to
100% operational mode.
Photo by: Terri Heisele
Christopher Nurse
A Disaster Recover
Plan, as its name
suggests, is and should
be, considered one of
the main pillars of any
organization.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Disasters-and-How-to-Recover!&id=6512224