Disaster Recovery Journal

By Rob Giffin, Avalution Consulting
Originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

Have you ever recommended additional redundancy for a process, department, or facility, only to be told that your organization couldn't afford it or have the project repeatedly delayed until next year? I have. It’s pretty common in our profession. 

By Glen Bricker, Avalution Consulting
Article originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

The goal of any recovery plan, regardless of the size or nature of the organization, is to protect life, minimize damage from an event, and quickly resume the delivery of critical products and services to meet customer requirements.  How this is accomplished, however, not only depends on the nature of the organization, but also its customers, size and resources, and culture.  The objective is to build plans that are based on realistic requirements, fit within the organization’s culture, and remain cost effective and appropriate.  The remainder of this article will discuss these characteristics and how they are incorporated into recovery plans. 

How does watching football on Sunday translate into to-do’s for Monday?  More than 100 million people watched the Super Bowl on Feb 3rd, they were expecting a great game and some good entertainment.  What they got was almost a disaster for CBS.  In the recovery planning business, we are always trying to minimize the likelihood of an incident becoming a disaster.  CBS did an excellent job of this on Sunday.

When the power went out in half of the Superdome and the game was stopped unexpectedly, CBS did a good job of keeping people entertained for the 34-minute delay.  While they likely didn’t plan for the lights going out in half of the building, they did have a contingency plan for the power going out and as a result were able to keep most fans watching the commercials and the announcers.  The numbers aren’t available yet, but they might have sold more commercials because of the extra prime-time viewership the “abnormality” created.

By Stacy Gardner, Avalution Consulting
Article originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

Standards…ugh! Even though the business continuity profession appears to be paying some attention to the topics of standards development and organizational certification, you may be tempted to skip over these articles and ignore the opportunity to review new or revised standards when released (especially if you feel organizational certification isn’t right for your organization). However, many reasons exist as to why all organizations (and BC practitioners) should not only pay attention to standards, but also seek opportunities to incorporate applicable elements of them into their programs to improve performance and enhance credibility.

While it is impossible to avoid disasters that are out of your control, the affect of such disasters can be minimized with a disaster recovery plan.  Disaster recovery plans are essential for businesses that value resiliency and that understand the importance of spending money now to protect against the threat of a potential disaster in the future.  You never know when disaster may strike and it may happen at a very inconvenient time.

One way to ensure that your disaster recovery plan is comprehensive and flexible is to invest in colocation hosting.  While colocation hosting may seem like a more expensive alternative to running your own servers in- house, you are actually getting more value for your money if you look at it from a disaster recovery standpoint.  But, what are the benefits of colocation hosting for disaster recovery and why might you choose this solution for your business?

Desktop as a Service is a relatively new concept in the cloud computing industry.  It is similar to Software as a Service, except it’s not only the software, but the entire desktop environment that is provided as a service.  In essence, the desktop is made available as a service to users, regardless of location or environment.  For example, an employee could work on a client database using his desktop computer and then later, access this same information through his laptop, tablet, or smartphone when he leaves the office.

Desktop as a Service, also known as desktop virtualization, lets users sync their data using a client-server model with all of the computing power coming from the cloud server.  The monitor, laptop, phone, or tablet is simply there to display the information resulting from the processing and to relay information to the server regarding simple control signals, such as the click of a mouse or typing on a keyboard.

In today's fast-paced society, companies of all sizes need affordable ways to deliver quality IT services reliably and continuously.  One of the key benefits of cloud computing, one that is also often overlooked, is how cloud computing can help ensure business continuity, as well as speedy disaster recovery.  Cloud hosting offers a low-cost disaster recovery and business continuity solution for small to midsize businesses and a more cost-effective DR alternative to larger, cost-conscious corporations.

With the cloud as your disaster recovery solution, you can use your in-house systems to run your core business and work with a cloud hosting provider for your business continuity and disaster protection.  With cloud hosting, your data and software are replicated automatically in the cloud, creating increased redundancy.  You don't have to buy extra hardware or software to mirror your data center environment.  Instead, cloud servers can be easily partitioned to create multiple environments in the cloud, and these cloud servers can be spun up and configured in a matter of minutes.  In addition, with cloud computing and cloud storage, you only pay for the resources you use, so the cost is minimal.

By Stacy Gardner, Avalution Consulting
Article originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

Though many business continuity standards emphasize the importance of tracking corrective actions to address identified issues, the recently published ISO 22301 (and previously BS 25999-2) also requires conducting a root cause analysis – looking not just at an issue, but its cause and how it can be prevented in the future.   Root cause analysis (RCA) is an approach that seeks to proactively prevent reoccurrences of the same adverse event or systems failure by tracing causal relationships of a failure to its most likely impactful origin, then putting measures in place to mitigate underlying causes to ultimately help prevent recurrence of the adverse event in the future.  While common in disciplines that deal with extreme precision and protection of life (e.g. quality and environmental health and safety), there’s no reason the business continuity discipline cannot benefit from a similar approach, particularly for practitioners looking to fully implement ISO 22301.  This article explains root cause analysis and identifies how organizations can benefit from implementing the concept in a business continuity context.

By Greg Marbais, Avalution Consulting
Article originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

Many business continuity professionals face shrinking budgets and, because of an expanding business continuity program scope and aggressive recovery objectives, lack the time necessary to “touch” all areas of the organization and optimally prepare for disruptive events. As a result, practitioners need a way to create repeatable processes to execute recurring planning activities in a decentralized manner while making efficient use of the organization’s personnel to comply with management’s expectations. One approach we often find useful in rolling out a standardized, thorough, efficient and repeatable process for business continuity activities is the creation of a business continuity program toolkit. A business continuity toolkit typically contains a set of instructional narratives, as well as templates, tools and examples to help dispersed personnel appropriately execute business continuity planning activities consistent with organizational standards.

By Brian Zawada & Jacque Rupert, Avalution Consulting
Article originally posted on Avalution Consulting’s Blog

The introduction of ISO 22301 (Societal security – Requirements – Business continuity management system) more closely aligns business continuity to the broader risk management discipline. A major contributor to this alignment is the standard’s requirement to understand the organization’s “risk appetite” (a term not used in BS 25999).