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Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Articles
May 9th, 2013
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Disaster Plans need to be updated
April 17th, 2013
Disaster Plans need to be update for as Windows XP is reaching the ending of life - it will no longer be supported.
Recently Microsoft made the unsurprising announcement that as of 8th April 2014 they will no longer provide updates or security patches for Windows XP.
Organisations still using the 12 year old technology will be required to replace XP with a new operating system, most likely Windows 7. This change could come at considerably effort and cost and if not appropriately managed and co-ordinated could cause significant impact to the business. For example;
- Windows 7 Software licences will need to be purchased and installed
- Existing PCs, laptop and servers may not be Windows XP compatible and will require upgrade or replacement
- Legacy applications that are no longer supported may not continue to operate in a Windows 7 environment and would require development changes or in extreme cases complete replacement
- Existing data may need to be converted to alternative formats to ensure it can still be safely backed up, verified and restored in the event of a business continuity or disaster recovery event.
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Data Backbone of Disaster Recovery
March 29th, 2013
Data is the backbone of every organization. No matter the business, industry, or size, reliable data access is essential to operations. As that data continues to grow exponentially, it is important to have a backup and recovery strategy that meets current business needs and has the flexibility to grow and change.
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Protecting your data is vital to the survival and growth of your business. You must keep your systems and employees up and running - and productive - even as fast backup and restore processes are being completed. And, should a "worst-case scenario" occur, being prepared with an appropriate disaster recovery plan is essential.
The Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) can be used as a Disaster Planning template for any size of enterprise. The Disaster Recovery template and supporting material have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA compliant.
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Will your disaster recovery provider be in business when you need them?
March 12th, 2013
What if your were in Florida and the Hurricane season was in full swing and your provider went out of business. Would you have the time to move to a new provider and test your solution before you need to execute your plan?
For example, earlier this year Google decided to close its Message Continuity service. Google gave most clients a reasonable timescale to find an alternative supplier, allowing existing Message Continuity contracts to run until their contacts expired. What if that was the communication solution you had selected for communicating with your staff? Would you be able to implement, test, and communicate a new one on time.
Another example was the news that Doyenz, the US-based supplier of rCloud, a service which offers disaster recovery for physical and virtual servers, had decided to pull the plug on its UK operations. Clients were given not weeks or months but days to respond and to find a new supplier.
CIOs and IT managers all need to consider all of the possibilities when developing and testing their disaster recovery plans.
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Disaster Recovery Misconceptions
March 1st, 2013
Disaster Recovery - What are the major misconceptions when a disaster occurs with IT systems? Can your systems can not support your companys day-to-day operations?
The major misconception is that a backup recovery plan is all that you need. At Janco Associates that is not enough. We have found that most companies are really not prepared. Files can be restored but it does no good if they do have facilities for their staffs.
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Top 10 Disaster Recovery and business continuity are all about being ready for everything. The question that every IT manager and CIO has to answer every day...
- Google data center security & disaster recovery This is a great video on physical security as well as the the software security. This is a great primer which all CIOs and Data...
- Meeting ISO 27031 Requirements Meeting ISO 27031 Requirements ISO 27031 The ISO Standard defines the Information and Communication Technology (ITC) Requirements for Business Continuity (IRBC) program that supports the...
- Will your disaster recovery provider be in business when you need them? Disaster Recovery plans that depend on outsourcers face significant additional risk What if your were in Florida and the Hurricane season was in full swing...
- IBM Business Continuity Plan Services Business Continuity Services Video Business continuity video is good overview of what IBM thinks about this...
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Weather Issues Impact Business Continuity Plans
February 16th, 2013
Weather needs to be considered when business continuity plans are developed.
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- Disasters Caused by Weather Affect South the Most Disasters as Hurricane Sandy showed, weather can have extensive and long lasting affects. Sandy now has entered the North East in the Billion Dollar Weather...
- Blizzard 2013 Blizzard 2013 to test many business continuity plans In the aftermath of the Blizzard 2013, which disrupted transportation, power, internet, phone and numerous other technical...
- Disaster Planning for Weather Related Events Disaster Planning steps to follow for weather related events Disaster Planning is a must given the changing weather and climate. As it has been recently...
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Top 10 Disaster Recovery and business continuity are all about being ready for everything. The question that every IT manager and CIO has to answer every day...
- Business Continuity Plan Has to be in Place Now Business continuity plan is something that every organization needs to have in place before a disaster happens. Every day somewhere in the world disasters are...
Requirements of a basic disaster recovery plan
February 5th, 2013
Effective operations management requires clear, concise recovery execution or automation, enabling staff members to execute the same tasks and achieve similar results. In particular, an effective disaster recovery plan must address three key goals:
- Minimize downtime: The consequences of extended downtime can be severe, not only in terms of lost business and lost productivity, but even in terms of survival for small organizations.
- Minimize risk: Not having a disaster recovery plan often constitutes an unacceptable level of risk - but simply having a disaster recovery plan in place does not eliminate risk if its reliability is uncertain.
- Control costs: Traditional disaster recovery plans are often limited in scope because of the costs associated with building and maintaining a recovery site, training staff members in disaster recovery processes, testing those processes, and so on.
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ISO22301:2012 - Standards definition
January 17th, 2013
ISO22301:2012 (Societal Security - Business Continuity Management System - Requirements) is the international standard for business continuity within organisations and defines the specification and best practice for implementing a robust business continuity management system. Published in May 2012, ISO22301 replaces the BS25999 standard which will be withdrawn in 2013.
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Is this years flu the start of a pandemic
January 16th, 2013
In disaster planning when a pandemic occurs the data center exists but people often are in separate locations. The Disaster Planning and Business Continuity Planning processes need to make the user and business operating experience is as similar as possible so that the work environment is the same in the remote site (often home) as in the office.
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How Sandy and Katrina have impacted DR Planning
December 14th, 2012
Business continuity planning can help your organization thrive again, quickly, after a major catastrophe. After watching so many enterprises struggle after the wake of Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, its important that you take a proactive approach to business continuity. Once the tragedy occurs, it may be too late to restore systems and access backup information properly. Here are some of the benefits of having a proactive recovery and continuity plan in the case of a major outage:
- Workforce Retention
- Employee Communication
- Customer Communication
- Supplier/Vendor Communication
- Quick Emergency Data Recovery
- Long-Term Data Recovery
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ISO 22313 closed
December 5th, 2012
ISO 22313, the International business continuity management systems guidance standard, has entered the final pre-publication stage.
On 30th November ISO announced that ISO 22313 has reached development stage 60.00, which means that the standard has been finalised and is being produced for publication.
ISO 22313 Societal security -- Business continuity management systems Guidance will be a 46 page publication and has been developed by the ISO TC 223 Societal security committee.
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Database is the core of the disaster recovery process
December 1st, 2012
The database is the heart of any organisation. From running applications to processing transactions and storing customer and other mission-critical data, without the database, businesses simply cannot function. Despite the critical nature of the database, many companies do not have a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategy in place, and resort to crisis management when their database crashes, often resulting in costly downtime.
The Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template is a comprehensive tool and set of disaster and business continuity planning resources, including a detail disaster recovery business continuity work plan on how to proceed from evaluating risk factors to retrieving server data.
There are a few checklist items to consider with backup and disaster recovery, ensuring minimal disruption, and most importantly, continuity for the business.
Checklist item number one: Backup and disaster recovery strategy
Whether organisations run a full disaster recovery environment or simply conduct regular backups, having a plan and processes in place to govern this in the event of an emergency can literally save a business.
A backup and disaster recovery strategy is therefore essential for every modern business of any size. This is the most important step in ensuring your database is not a disaster waiting to happen.
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Backup has changed with the impact of new larger disasters
November 18th, 2012
By now you've realized that today's unprecedented data growth, datacenter consolidation and server virtualization are rendering conventional backup and recovery useless, if not confusing, complicated and inefficient.
Managing backup and recovery in today's environment is a multi-dimensional challenge with both near and long term business requirements. Recent technological developments in disk backup have had a positive impact on short term data retention requirements (see also BYOD policy). But these improvements do not replace the need to execute and deliver on a long term data retention strategy which includes:
- Business and Regulatory Requirements Demand a Long-term Plan
- Manage and Contain Your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
- Encrypt Your Data for Secure Long-term Retention
- Weigh the Environmental Impacts and Minimize Power and Cooling Costs
- Simplify Management of the Entire Solution
Existing backup and recovery operations are becoming increasingly complex, cutting into staff time and budgets and slowing operations. A new strategy is essential, and its really not a matter of if, but when.
Check out this policy template to explore the best strategies for meeting 21st century backup and recovery challenges, including:
- Reducing storage costs by leveraging your existing investments more efficiently
- Accelerating protection and recovery with snapshots and dedupe
- Eliminating manual processes and scripting through automation
Related posts:
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- Top 10 Disaster Recovery Best Practices As requirements for avoiding downtime become increasingly stringent, administrators need tools and platforms that can help them plan, design, and implement disaster recovery strategies that...
- 10 point checklist for disaster recovery 10 point checklist for disaster recovery HR, Legal and Media Communications Disaster Recovery 10 Point Checklist A list of 10 questions to rank how comprehensive...
- 10 Backup Best Practices supplementing a disaster recovery and business continuity solution with the cloud 10 Backup best practices - supplementing a disaster recovery and business continuity back-up solution with the cloud Backup best practices are used by many CIOs...
- Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Tips Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Tips Business continuity requires that you are prepared to deal to with a disaster and is one of the only...
- 8 Characteristics of a Good Disaster Recovery Manager 8 Characteristics of a Good Disaster Recovery Manager The characteristics of a good disaster recovery manager and leader in a crisis like a recovery process...
Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Compliance Issues
November 6th, 2012
Compliance and business continuity management are closely inter-related ISO 22301 is just one of many standards. A companys disaster recovery and business continuity programs would be incomplete without covering compliance risks and without using compliance tools to mitigate risks. On the other hand, compliance management is a critical component of disaster recovery and business continuity. This is recognized by executive managements ensuring that integrity and regulatory compliance are achieved alongside strategic, operations and reporting objectives as the key pillars of a corporate DP / BC program.
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Related posts:
- 5 Corporate Compliance Errors Executives Are Making 5 Corporate Compliance Errors many executives are making Compliance is never easy and even the best make mistakes on occasion. But we can learn from...
- Top 10 Reasons Why Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Plans Fail In the recession many organizations put disaster recovery and business continuity on the back burner. As a result those plans are not as functional as...
- Disaster Recovery Misconceptions Disaster Recovery What are the major misconceptions when a disaster occurs with IT systems? Can your systems can not support your companys day-to-day operations?...
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Top 10 Disaster Recovery and business continuity are all about being ready for everything. The question that every IT manager and CIO has to answer every day...
- Top 10 things business can do to minimize wildfire risks in business parks Top ten by Janco Wildfire caused and increase business interruption risk as the number of companies that are located in business parks located in...
Disaster Recovery is key to service desk management
October 17th, 2012
In a world where companies are dependant on technology, IT managers do not take risks when it comes to business continuity, according to new research from the Service Desk Institute. The found that 80 percent of service desks have a business continuity plan and 61 percent test the plan every six months, compared to just 9 percent in 2011.
The new findings are encouraging and suggest that companies recognise the financial and reputational damage that can result from service desk disasters.
According to the research, 78 percent of respondents view the service desk as essential to re-establishing service if a disaster strikes. Additionally, nearly half (48 percent) of respondents expect full service to be re-established in one hour, underscoring the importance of having a business continuity plan that all service desk staff are trained to implement.
The survey also reveals a lack of awareness about business continuity plans within businesses, with over half (53 percent) of respondents claiming none or only some of the service desk staff are aware of the provisions in their plan. This leaves massive room for error in the event of a disaster. Despite this communication shortfall, the research suggests that businesses are responding to the need to develop more efficient, more sophisticated business continuity plans. Of those surveyed, 76 percent now have scenario-specific plans in place, compared with just 52 percent last year.
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10 Steps to managing business continuity
October 7th, 2012
No company is immune from crisis. So while savage brawls like those seen at Foxconn may be uncommon, it is important that businesses are well equipped to handle and recover from unexpected disruptions.
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- Identify critical business functions
- Remember seven Ps needed to keep your business operational
- For overseas suppliers understand and track past incidents of known work stoppages.
- Agree and document your plans
- Make sure plans are communicated to key staff and suppliers
- Try your plans out in mock scenariosIf possible include suppliers in your exercises
- Expect the unexpected
- Make sure your continuity plans are nimble and can evolve quickly
- Make sure youre not just following a procedure
- Get insurance!
A business continuity plan is not a disaster plan
October 3rd, 2012
A business continuity plan is NOT a disaster response plan. These are not steps to take during the actual disaster event, but rather steps to take after the emergency to return towards normal business operations. The purpose of the plan is due to normal operations not being as easy to return to as you might think. Dependent on the event, you may no longer have some of your most vital resources.Before even starting a business continuity plan it is important to outline a plan of action:
First determine how many plans you are going to have for your organization. Most organizations have broken there plans down by department, but there are some who elect to create one umbrella plan.- more info
Business Continuity High Risk Users
September 16th, 2012
Individual users who pose high risks to and organization to disaster recovery planning efforts and when an event occurs...
Once a plan is created and an event occurs, failures can be predicted because of a few types of high risk individuals. When the plan is activated, they are the ones who are not prepared, "too busy" focusing on the wrong things, and are the first ones to blame someone else because their part of the recovery process did not work.
- When you are creating your plan you need to be aware of these "personalities" and address them quickly.
- People who do not "participate" actively and often avoid documenting their procedures and backup/recovery processes
- People who never take a vacation or are the "sole" point of contact within a group because for whatever reason they are the only ones who know the big picture
- People who are the "heroes" who keep things running and are indispensable
Many organizations are either blind to the risk or reluctant to do something about these types of individuals, almost out of fear of upsetting the individual. This just hands them more power and the longer the situation persists the greater the risk to your organization.
Every organization has at least one of these personality types. As the individual responsible for your disaster recovery plan you should take the time to
- Identify who they are
- Do not be held to ransom by these people - they could resign tomorrow
- Deal with them - take action before it is too late
- De-personalize the situation - it is about your process not the individual.
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Disaster Plan Quick Action Steps
August 5th, 2012
Every IT manager knows the importance of having an effective and fast disaster recovery (DR) plan. Organizations without an adequate plan may find themselves out of business quickly after experiencing a major disaster. Organizations that ensure survival following a disaster understand the basics of creating a good plan.
A disaster recovery is a response to a declared disaster or a regional disaster. It is the restoration or recovery of an entire Agent computer. A disaster recovery plan describes how an organization is to deal with potential disasters. Just as a disaster is an event that makes the continuation of normal functions impossible, a disaster recovery plan consists of the precautions taken so that the effects of a disaster will be minimized, and the organization will be able to either maintain or quickly resume mission-critical functions. Typically, disaster recovery planning involves an analysis of business processes and continuity needs; it may also include a significant focus on disaster prevention.
The Disaster Recovery Planning Template (DRP) can be used for any sized enterprise. The template and supporting material have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant. The complete package includes:
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Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning are becoming more complex
May 30th, 2012
Whether your organization is grappling mobile users, too much data to protect in operational windows, physical space constraints, or concerns around cloud computing, backup and disaster rEcovery planning is becoming increasingly complex, cutting into staff time and budgets and slowing operations. New apporaches to disaster recovery planning and data protection approaches must take into account the changine technology landscape.
Janco's Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Continuity Template directly addresses these issues.
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