Fall 1996 Articles

Disaster Recovery Journal

Volume 9, Issue 4
Fall 1996

The Internet Connection

By Robert Arnold

The level of interest in the Internet and disaster recovery planning seems to still be growing rapidly based on the number of hits our website has been receiving over the past month. We recorded our largest number of hits ever on Sept. 12 when our site received 5284 hits in one 24-hour period. This is almost double the average number of hits we’ve had over the last six months, but it is quickly becoming a sign of our new average. We believe this growth is due to the level of interest in business continuity and the Internet.
Another example of this growing interest is a newly added workshop presented at our Eighth International Disaster Recovery Symposium and Exhibition last month in Atlanta, Ga. The topic of this “early-bird” Sunday Workshop was “Using the Internet as a Disaster Recovery Resource.” Cole Emerson and I presented to almost 150 disaster recovery planners. The topic was how the Internet could be used to find pertinent information on the web dealing with business continuity issues and topics. Attendees also received a disk filled with over 250 links to disaster related sites on the web.
I currently am in the process of updating our entire website, and I will include several of these links I found when researching for this presentation. A few sites which I would like to bring your attention to are:

•MIT: A Sample Business Continuity Plan
(http://web.mit.edu/security/www/pubplan.htm)
•University of Toronto's DR Plan Outline
(http://www.utoronto.ca/security/drp.htm#DRP)
•Unisys World Editorials
(http://www.zilker.net/business/pci/un/editorials/)
•FEMA’s DR Guide for Businesses and Industry
(http://www.fema.gov/fema/bizindex.html)
•The Disaster Connection
(http://rvik.ismennt.is/~gro/disaster/)
•The Disaster Recovery Institute
(http://www.dr.org/)
•Disaster Recovery Information Exchange
(http://www.utoronto.ca/security/drie.htm)
•Business Recovery Managers Association
(http://www.corp.hp.com/publish/brma/)
•Disaster Management Courses at Univ. Wisconsin
(http://epdwww.engr.wisc.edu/iscourses/)

These sites are just a few excellent resources available to you via the web. One site in particular, The Disaster Connection, is an excellent starting place to find disaster related sites. This site includes hundreds of links to numerous types of different sites and they are broken down by categories, making it very useful. Another interesting tool on the Internet is Listservs. A Listserv is a mailing list you subscribe to via email on a particular topic and occasionally you will receive a newsletter via email with pertinent information concerning that topic. Two interesting Listservs on the topics of disasters are:

•Binomial DRP Newsletter
To subscribe just email: majordomo@magnacom.com
In the Body of the text type:
“SUBSCRIBE DISASTER RECOVERY”

•Disaster Research Newsletter
To subscribe send email to: listproc@lists.colorado.edu
In the Body of the text type “SUBSCRIBE HAZARDS”

There’s another item you may be interested in joining. Currently a few disaster recovery planners are discussing the potential of getting together occasional to participate in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) discussion. IRC is a real time chat discussion where you log onto a free IRC site such as DALNET (www.dalnet.com) and then sign on to a channel which interests you, such as #drchat. IRC software can be downloaded from several locations free of charge such as DALNET. If you are interested in getting involved in any of these IRC discussions, please email me at drj@drj.com and we will try to get this idea off the ground. This could turn into a monthly meeting over IRC if enough interest is shown.
Also please remember that we at DRJ provide our website for your benefit. If there is anything you would like to see added, deleted, or changed, please drop me an email and I will certainly look into your suggestions.

Robert Arnold is a webmaster with Disaster Recovery Journal.

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Webmaster---Robert Arnold

Last Updated--Thursday, Oct 24, 1996.