2. Planning, designing, documenting and distributing policies,
processes and procedures to ensure quick recovery of a
business IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster, man-
made or natural.
WHAT IS DISASTER
RECOVERY PLANNING?
A DR Plan is a document that includes everything anyone
would need to know to restore your business systems to an
operational state.
3. Without a DR Plan, how would you go about restoring
your businesses systems? Who would do it?
Having a Disaster Recovery Plan…
Eliminates critical business system downtime
Limits the lag of service restoration
Mitigates risk of loss of critical business information
Enforces good practices in introducing change to business systems
Supplements business insurance
Strengthens trust in your business on part of customers, suppliers,
partners and regulators
WHY IS A DISASTER
RECOVERY PLAN NEEDED?
You have insurance to cover your business against the
unthinkable, but how long will it take to be back to
fully operational?
4. Great! Yes, the data is important, but there’s more to a good
Disaster Recovery plan, things that will help you answer tough
questions like these
Do you know how long it takes to restore your complete environment
Parts of your environment?
Do you know how much data you will lose and how this will effect
your business?
Do you know how much each hour of downtime costs your business?
How many people on staff know how to restore from the vendor’s
service?
How long does it take to get ahold of hardware resources if they are
required?
How would staff continue to work if the office itself became
physically unusable?
YEAH, BUT I ALREADY USE A VENDOR TO
BACKUP OUR DATA
5. Four major phases of Disaster Recovery Planning
Where are you now?
Do you have failover plans in place?
Do existing procedures work?
Are they locked in one person’s head?
Prioritize
What are your biggest risks?
What systems can your business not run without?
Build and distribute a working DR Plan
Policies – How you ensure recovery is part of the plan forward
Processes – Make sure when things change the plan still works
Procedures – Restore individual systems and communicate with
stakeholders
Test, test, & re-test
Pick one of those critical systems you identified – what would happen if
someone kicked the power plug? Are you sure? Testing makes you sure…
HOW IS A DISASTER
RECOVERY PLAN BUILT?
Audit
Plan
Work
Test
6. There are two traditional approaches to DR Planning
Internal staff
The institutional knowledge is already present
Staff has a vested interest in success
Probably not enough bandwidth
Skills gap
Lack of ‘assignment’
DR Consultant
Strong subject matter expertise
Extra cost
No assurance consultant advisements enacted after engagement
WHAT’S GOOD AND BAD ABOUT EITHER?
7. Managed Disaster Recovery Planning Services gets all the
good stuff in the right places
HOW DO I GET THE BEST OF BOTH?
Staff Consultant
Institutional knowledge
Vested Interest
Expertise
Bandwidth
8. Ensure your DR Plan does not get stale - all changes are
quickly and accurately reflected in the DR Plan
Manage the distribution of the DR Plan revisions, both
electronic and paper, guaranteeing everyone has DR Plan
access at all times
Make certain the DR Plan works with regularly scheduled and
controlled testing
Organize recovery efforts with a clear well defined action plan
that outlines exactly what to do for all involved in restorative
effortsshare
SO, WHY MANAGED
DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING?
Protect your business investment with a quality DR Plan that is
managed as a service, eliminating pitfalls and hidden costs,
both actual and opportunity, and redirect your people to
continuing to grow your business