Disaster Planning Business Continity News
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Disaster Planning Business Continuity News
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Over 50% of all organizations have no plan
in place to recover their critical information should an unforeseen event occur,
and almost as many have no strategy to keep their business running following a
major disruption.
The findings are in just released research into data management practices. It
found 48 per cent of organizations admitted to having no business continuity
plan, and 51 per cent have no disaster recovery (DR) procedures.
This lack of DR
planning is consistent with surveys done out in 2007 and 2009. The current
research was compiled in an online survey of 1,000 companies last
October.
The survey found that some companies are following best practice in data
management: 18 per cent said they could restore mission-critical applications
within four hours if their network or data center were destroyed; 23 per cent
cited a recovery time of up to one business day and 22 per cent cited four
business days or more.
Business Continuity Planning 101
The basic process for developing a business continuity plan is:
- Create a business continuity planning team: Members should be from operations management, the chief security officer, the IT department, legal staff, and human resources.
- Define leadership roles: Determine which executives and employees are critical to operating the business (and supporting customers) that need to have access to key systems and information at all time.
- Assume the worst and plan for needed extra capacity: Before an event occurs, businesses need to plan ahead for increased network bandwidth and secured remote access requirements.
- Define emergency voice and data communications solutions: There are many to choose from, but a SSL VPN is one of the leading solutions to provide flexible, remote access, which is essential to any business continuity plan.
- Define access points for operations, network and IT: Create a business continuity portal for employees and partners. If the company has an Intranet, this site becomes command central from which employees can access information - HR policies, emergency contacts and a "start here" feature should be included.
- Contract for a secondary back-up site: Should the primary site be unavailable, companies should have a real-time mirror of data and staff housed at a secure facility.
- Backup data: In the event that the secondary site is unavailable, organizations should plan for multiple layers of failover.
- Plan to utilize smartphones and tablets: With mobile devices and "wireless networks", IT departments can leverage these tools to ensure complete connectivity in times of emergencies.
- Pre-arrange Internet meeting capabilities: In the event of an office closure, employees still need to communicate internally or with external parties (i.e. suppliers, customers). Implement the technology before it is needed
- Review number of sites and VPN gateways: Conducting an annual audit to provide a complete picture of your network and the ability to address problem areas before a disaster strikes.
- Test and test again: These 'fire drills'
enable the business continuity team to see how the current system is working,
especially when employees are accessing information from remote locations
(i.e. from home, a relative's house, and hotel). Once complete, those in
management, IT and human resources can modify their business continuity plan
accordingly.
Core backup and recovery concerns
CIOs and IT Managers need to consider manadated compliance
requirements
- Question that need to be answered are:
- Is our data safe in transit and at rest?
- What prevents hackers from gaining access to our data?
- Is our data properly handled, stored, and deleted?
- Who can access our data?
- What are the benchmark measurements?
- Is our data backup strategy compliant?
- Will our recovery be successful?
How long should it take to create a business continuity plan?
Business continuity planning is a continual process, and not something that is done once and filed away to be used in an emergency. In error many organisations treat the creation of a business continuity plan as a normal project, subsequently deploying the plan and handing over to an operational department for maintenance.
In most organizations, DR is the quintessential complex, unfamiliar task. Disasters happen so rarely that recovery operations are the opposite of routine. What's more the myriad, interconnected data, application and other resources that must be recovered after a disaster make recovery an exceptionally difficult and error-prone effort.
How to create a business continuity plan...
- more infoWhich states had the fewest major weather disasters
The U.S. has sustained 112 weather/climate disasters over the past quarter century in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total standardized losses for the 112 events exceed $750 billion, according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Climatic Data Center.
