Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning

What is Contingency Planning?

Contingency planning: The goal of a contingency plan are to establish a communication system, create recovery/response thresholds, and define the roles and responsibilities of key employees.

Disaster Classification

Natural disasters-These disasters include flood, fire, earthquake, hurricane, smog, etc

Man made disasters- Human error and intervention may be intentional or unintentional which can cause massive failures such as loss of communication and utility. These disasters include walkout, sabotage, burglary, virus, intrusion.

Some common threats include the following

Disease

Earthquake

Fire

Flood

Cyber attack

Hurricane

Utility outage

Terrorism

What is Disaster Recovery Plan?

Disaster recovery plan: Provides detailed step-by-step procedures for the recovery and operation of mission critical systems. Also includes detailed procedures for responding to emergencies and performing post-disaster recovery efforts.

What is in Contingency Planning

Your plans also must identify key individuals responsible for implementing recovery actions specify actions and sequences required to allow essential functions to continue; and identify procedures for restoring services to the original processing sites.

What is in Contingency Planning

Scenario format, to be followed when implementing backup and recovery actions.

Contingency plan is that of an in-depth procedures manual for recovery team members to make decisions regardless of the disaster situation.

The Crisis management plan should include

A database with the names, phone/page/fax/cellular numbers, e-mail and postal addresses of everyone on the team Assigned roles and procedures for everyone on the crisis team A multimedia database with critical information on the organization's plants, offices, personnel, products and services that can be quickly accessed and analyzed Commercial databases that complement proprietary databases A means for everyone on the team to access the databases and collaborate from remote locations globally

The crisis management plan should facilitate rapid responses for

Determining the crisis' origin and scope

Monitoring the crisis

Acknowledging the organization's responsibilities

Taking prudent action to end the crisis

Informing all those affected about how to protect themselves

Updating those affected continuously via interactive communications and the media

Pre-Preparedness Plan

A pre-preparedness plan should include pre-disaster actions to protect people, business property - including data - and facilities; a pre-defined emergency shutdown and evacuation procedure; and off-site storage of backed up information.

- Analyze your risk

- Create a disaster recovery plan

- Provide your staff with disaster recovery training

- Regularly audit your disaster recovery systems and procedures

Possible Incidents

This list should include all possible incidents no matter how remote the likelihood of their occurrence.

Against each item listed the project team or manager should note a probability rating. Each incident should also be rated for potential impact severity level. From this information, it will become much easier to frame the plan in the context of the real needs of the organization.

Protection

Local mirrors of systems and/or data and use of disk protection technology such as RAID

Surge protectors — to minimize the effect of power surges on delicate electronic equipment

Fire preventions — alarms, fire extinguishers

Disaster Response

Required responses to a disaster

Determine a disaster condition

Notify persons responsible for recovery

Initiate the Institute's Business Continuity Plan

Provide support services to aid recovery

Recovery Phase

Critical Functions

Essential Functions

Necessary Functions

Desirable Functions

Communication

Provide critical voice and data communications services in the event that normal telecommunications lines and equipment are disrupted or relocation of personnel is necessary.

Consult with outside contractors and service providers to ensure that replacement equipment and materials are available for timely delivery and installation.

Utilize available resources, such as the MIT Cable Television network and voice mail system, to broadcast information relevant to the disaster

Identify the potential risks

Estimate the effects of a disaster on the organization

Estimate monies to go back into recovery strategy.

Impact Analysis

The impact analysis should quantify the effects of a disaster as much as possible. Hard dollar figures

Recovery Kit

The numbers and types of desks, required outside of the primary business location in the secondary location

The individuals involved in the recovery effort along with their contact and technical details

Data required from the secondary location desks for critical business functions

The manual workaround solutions

The peripheral requirements like printers, copier, fax machine, calculators, paper, pens etc.

Recovery Kit

The crisis management command structure The location of a secondary work site (where necessary) Telecommunication architecture between primary and secondary work sites Data replication methodology between primary and secondary work sites The application and software required at the secondary work site.The type of physical data requirements at the secondary work site.

Recovery Kit

Important clients and their contact details

Important vendors/suppliers and their contact details

Changes in upstream/downstream supplier routes

Keep business cards and brochures

Mohanad Mohammed™