What is Disaster Recovery
Information on Disaster Recovery
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:
- Disaster Recovery Plan Template
- Business and IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire
- Work Plan
With the template is a 3 page Job Description for the Disaster Recovery Manager. The Disaster Recovery Plan Template PREMIUM Bundle contains 11 additional key job descriptions.
Clients can also subscribe to Janco's DRP update service and receive all updates to the DRP Template*.
The DRP template includes everything needed to customize the Disaster Recovery Plan to fit your specific requirement.
Disaster Plan / Business Continuity News
Business continuity planning for a Pandemic
Larger corporations typically can continue business as usual even while many employees are out sick in a Pandemic. However Business Continuity Planning at small firms rely heavily on key individuals and find themselves nearly incapacitated if several of those key people get sick, must stay home with sick children, or are in areas put under quarantine.
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Phone Trees
At
a minimum, small business owners should update employees' contact information to
include current home phone numbers and addresses, e-mail addresses, and cell
phone numbers. Some employers establish phone trees so they can efficiently
contact all their employees to check on and alert them during an emergency.
Another
vital component to a business continuity plan is to collect contact information,
including cell phone numbers, for their suppliers, vendors, and key customers.
Keep this information in print and online, and store copies off-site in case you
can't get into your office.
A
host of legal and medical questions may arise for small business owners if swine
flu roars back with a vengeance this fall.
Imagine
you run a small business like a day-care center, where vulnerable children
congregate and colds and flu are prevalent. Do you close and send your entire
staff and all children home at the first sign of any flu? Do you send home only
sick children and sick staff? When? When do you reopen or allow them to return?
What information and medical clearance would you need to send staff or children
home, allow them to return, close, or reopen the center? These are not easy
questions.
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Backup Staff
Janco
recommends that companies prepare for operational disruptions by doing employee
cross training or lining up backup staff now. Employers should review and
enhance existing emergency disaster plans to ensure business continuity.
Employers that are just getting started should develop a plan that includes
pandemic preparedness, and review it and conduct drills regularly. A checklist
for flu policy is posted at the government's flu awareness Web site.
Aside
from preparing and practicing for pandemic, small business owners may want to
check with their attorneys for advice on unusual situations -- What do you do
with employees who are medically vulnerable to the flu or those with young
children or elderly relatives at home? Do you send them home? When and for how
long? With pay?
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Paid Sick Leave?
The
federal Family Medical Leave Act provides eligible employees with up to 12 weeks
of unpaid leave to care for themselves or sick family members. Generally, FMLA
regulations do not cover flu absences unless complications arise, but courts
recently have interpreted the FMLA to mandate leave for the flu and other viral
infections.
However,
the federal law does not cover firms with fewer than 50 employees. Small
employers usually do not have to provide sick leave, so it is a surprise to many
employees that they are not entitled to any sick leave, much less any paid sick
leave.
Another
question for your human resources manager and/or attorney is what communications
responsibility you have as a business owner if one of your employees is
diagnosed with swine flu. There are health confidentiality and privacy issues
for employees, so employers should not disclose personal health information. But
employers do not want a modern day Typhoid Mary spreading swine flu at work. If
there is an employee with confirmed swine flu, some employers are alerting
employees that there may be swine flu exposure at work without identifying the
involved employee.
You might need to think about giving an infected person's immediate co-workers enhanced sick leave to protect themselves or family members, particularly if they have particular medical vulnerability to the illness, he says. Some employers bring in cleaning crews to disinfect an office where swine flu has been found. Providing hand disinfectant for employees is not a bad idea.
- more infoCloud Recovery Not Easy - Disaster Recovery Not Under User Control
Microsoft officials still have not provided many details about what caused the outage, other than to say it was a core system failure. The failure is unrelated to Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and/or Microsoft's Azure datacenters, as the company has continued to run the Sidekick back-end on the same infrastructure it has been running on before Microsoft acquired the company in 2008.
The Microsoft/Danger team apologized for the amount of time they are taking to restore contacts, photos, e-mail and other Sidekick services to which users lost access at the start of the month. The team said they were taking their time "to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data."
The team still is not committing to an exact recovery timetable, but is saying restoration should begin this week. Microsoft said, "We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter."
After telling users that they likely had lost all of their personal data, the Microsoft/Danger team then said they expected to be able to recover some of their data. Mid-weeklast week, they said they expected to recover "most if not all" of the missing user data.
What is a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan
Disaster recovery and business continuity planning are processes that help organizations prepare for disruptive events - whether those event might include a hurricane or simply a power outage caused by a backhoe in the parking lot. The CIO's involvement in this process can range from overseeing the plan, to providing input and support, to putting the plan into action during an emergency.
- more infoCloud is not as secure as many thought
T-Mobile and Microsoft Sidekick is a set of exterior shells (for
mobile phones) that can be personalized and provides the capability
to record, play and share videos: record videos using the camera; receive video
attachments from e-mail, picture messaging, or side load videos to the microSD
card; play video using the built-in media player; share videos via e-mail,
Bluetooth or picture messaging.
Sidekick failed and lost user data. On the face of it, there are some obvious lessons to be learned from the Sidekick snafu, even as Microsoft Corp. reported today that most of the data that was missing will be recovered from servers at its Danger Inc. subsidiary.
The lessons learned are:
- Back up your mobile phone's critical data independently - on a laptop, a desktop or a thumb drive.
- Raise questions about cloud computing and related services.
- Find out how your mobile device stores data, and
make sure you understand it.
The Sidekick incident should serve as a reminder to users to back up critical data. You cannot rely on cloud services to be 100% available all the time.
Not only is a backup of critical data imperative, users need to
have a way to retrieve the backed-up data. CIOs need to think about the value of
the data and what happens if the service is not available. There are many
Internet-based services that can be a second backup version to the original
backup, such as Plaxo. Having the second one drastically reduces the odds of
total loss.
At larger companies, data backups are commonplace and often include information contained on wireless phones as well as desktop computers, analysts said. The issue becomes more difficult when IT shops trust users who put critical company data on personally-owned wireless phones that aren't backed up.
Despite urging users to back up critical data, Staten joined three other analysts in remaining faithful to the mobile phone industry's strong push for cloud computing services, noting that the Sidekick case was relatively isolated.
Nearly every major smartphone provider is working on some version of cloud computing to back up data from smartphones and other cell phones. All those services could be vulnerable to data loss, and the Sidekick example is likely to prompt a broad re-examination of internal server backup procedures.
One added is risk is that backend services open enterprisees up to having data potentially lost, stolen or replicated somewhere that enterprises do not have knowledge of.
Imagine if this happened across an entire carrier's servers. For Verizon Wireless that could be 90 million people. Everybody should think twice if these services could really save your data up in the cloud.
- more infoImprove your RTO and RPO
How long can your Enterprise afford to be without your data? With an accelerated disaster recovery program, you never have to answer this question. Download this outline learn how the Janco Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template can reduce RPOs and RTOs even more.
Disaster Recovery Guide
Business
Continuity Planning
ISO 27001, ISO 27002, ISO 17799, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA Compliant
What is Disaster Recovery and how does the Disaster Recovery Planning Template help?
This DRP Template can be used for any sized enterprise.
The template and supporting material have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant. The complete package includes:
- Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Continuity Template
- Business and IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire
- Work Plan
- Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Audit Program
With lost data being a competitive liability, there is no room for downtime in today's business world.
- more infoHuge Waves - Office Buildings and Businesses Demolished
A series of tsunamis smashed into the Pacific island nations of American and Western Samoa killing possibly more than 100 people, some washed out to sea, destroying office buildings and homes, and injuring hundreds. Television images showed offices and homes ripped apart, cars submerged in the sea or lodged in trees and large fishing boats hurled ashore by the waves generated by a 8.0 magnitude quake southwest of American Samoa.
A second 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra late.
Disaster officials said the toll may reach 100 as rescuers search for bodies in flattened villages along the southern shore of the island of Upolu. Twenty villages on Upolu's south side were reportedly destroyed, including Lepa, the home of Samoa's prime minister. The area is also the main tourist area, and the waves destroyed some resorts. In neighboring American Samoa at least 24 people were killed and 50 injured with the southern portion of the main Tutuila island "devastated". The death toll there may also rise, said officials.
Huge Waves, Buildings Demolished
The waves that hit Pago Pago village were about 20 feet high. Some buildings were demolished by the waves, you know, there are no buildings anymore except the foundation. In addition, the island of Tonga was hit by a 13-foot wave on its northern coast. Tongan officials confirmed seven people were killed, while three were missing late on Wednesday.
Small tsunamis also reached New Zealand, Hawaii, and Japan.
Some areas have been flattened and the tsunami brought a lot of sand onshore. The Samoan resort Sea Breeze on the Southside of Upolu was destroyed when the waves hit it. The restaurant just floated out to sea complete, until it was smashed up in the water.
- more info