Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Steps Necessary In Disaster Recovery Planning Process

By Judy Sullivan


Survival and continued operations in any organization largely depends on the level to which the management is aware of potential risks facing the organization and their ability to come up with a plan that is capable of minimizing losses and returning operations to normal level within the shortest time period. Disaster recovery planning is a continuous process that aims at establishing a step by step action plan to be followed before, during and after a tragedy.

Given that the plan is developed to protect an organization from total collapse in case of any unfortunate event, whether man-made or natural, it must be tested and certified before being adopted. In most of the occasions, the outcome of the planning process in normally documented into a formal manner and all employees directed on their roles as outlined in the document. The primary objective is to be caught prepared, orderly recovery and general organization stability.

In addition to minimizing loss and ensuring quickest possible recovery in case of a disaster, this plan also ensures that standby systems are serviceable and reliable, reducing needs for decision making in chaotic situations by making sure that course of action is well understood by all those who are involved. It also reduces the insurance premium rates as insurance companies are more comfortable with comprehensive and functional disaster recovery plans (DRP).

The process of disaster recovery planning starts from the top level management. Both the board of directors and the chief executive officers must approve and be committed to the plan. A planning committee is then established with representatives drawn from all functional areas in the organization. The key figures in this committee are the data processing manager and the operations manager.

After defining the scope, the first task of the committee is to perform the risk assessment. This involves the preparation of a business impact analysis and risk analysis reports which exposes all possible threats from natural, technical and even human sources. In order to achieve this, all functional areas are critically analyzed so as to determine the impacts associated with different scenarios of calamities.

The DRP has become a necessity in all industries and is a requirement by law in some firms due to several reasons. Many firms primarily depend on computer networks and electronic systems which are prone to failure. In addition to this, dealing with accidents in a proper manner reduces insurance claims. For this reason, insurance firms normally charger lower premiums for firms with better DRP.

The last steps involve organizing and documenting the whole plan in form of a guide which is the presented to the top management for approval. The process is never complete before testing and evaluated to ensure it is functional. The feasibility and compatibility of facilities set aside for backup facilities. The testing to go through includes checklist, simulation, parallel and the full interruption.

The disaster recovery planning process involves much more than just coming up with storage and backups. It should be able to address all critical areas of risk exposures in the organization. If well done, this plan will prevent many risks from occurring, other than just minimizing their impacts.




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