Business
Continuity
Driven by the incentives of cost-efficiency and competition,
business has placed more and more of its critical
information assets into Information Technology (IT) -
computer systems and networks. This, in turn, has made
business dependent upon the uninterrupted function of the IT
Infrastructure, a dependency rarely perceived by those
within a small- to medium-sized company.
In 1993, the
University of Minnesota conducted a study that found that
93% of businesses who were without access to their data for
more than 10 days filed bankruptcy within one year of the
disaster. Of even greater concern was the finding that 50%
of those businesses filing for bankruptcy filed immediately.
Here is a step by
step list to consider when forming your disaster recovery
plan:
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1. |
Determine your required level of disaster
preparedness
Each business is different and, therefore, each
business may require a different level or response
and support in response to manmade or natural
phenomena.
Level 1 – Restore Availability
This level defines the most common disaster recovery
plan which involves a routine process of moving data
to another location for eventual restoration. This
term refers to a solution such as off-site storage
of tape backup and replication to a data vault in
another location.
Level 2 - High Availability
This level refers to creating redundant hardware or
redundant computer hardware so that if one piece of
hardware fails, another same-site hardware resource
is automatically assumes the responsibilities of the
failed component.
Level 3 - Remote Availability
Taking the concept of high availability to the next
level, this refers to creating a mirrored
environment in a different physical location. In
general, this includes the capability to run your
business from a location outside the affected area.
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2. |
Create your disaster recovery plan.
Make this the year that your business creates a
Disaster Recovery Plan. If your company never has
the time to put together a Disaster Recovery Plan or
does not know where to start, then call INFINETWORK
to complete the project.
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3. |
Update your disaster recovery plan on a regular
basis
All Southwest Florida businesses should take time to
think through the lessons of Hurricane Wilma and
update their Disaster Recovery Plan. Make sure to
identify revision numbers and effective dates.
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4. |
Train your employees and create awareness with your
key vendors.
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5. |
Audit the disaster recovery plan
The main goal of an IT auditor’s review is to ensure
completeness. IT auditors (either internal or
external) tend to view disaster recovery planning as
a facet of an organization's efforts to guarantee
the security and integrity of its data processing
capability. The U.S. government has enacted
legislation or issued regulations that require a
broad range of contingency planning to be undertaken
by businesses. In addition, many states are
currently deliberating legislation pertaining to
contingency planning, and some, including Florida
and Maryland, have already passed laws requiring
demonstrated disaster recovery capabilities for
certain industry segments.
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6. |
Test your disaster recover procedures
Tests provide the means for assessing the
workability of strategies for evacuation and
recovery that appear to work well on paper but may
not perform well in real life. In the past,
businesses may have been content with a regular
schedule for off-site storage of backup tapes and a
paper plan gathering dust on the IT manager's
bookshelf, however, an untested disaster recovery
plan cannot be assumed to provide an adequate
measure of recoverability to corporate data assets.
Documented and tested disaster recovery plans are
increasingly regarded by auditors, regulators and
business owners as a necessary component of business
operation integrity. |
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INFINETWORK
achieved status
of
Accredited Managed Services
Provider from the
MSP Alliance.
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