How to Convince Management to Invest in Recovery Measures - Essay Example

the disruption to the customers (our life's blood) would be the single-most convincing argument. Assuming that my bank was built not so much on commercial accounts, but on consumer accounts, recovery methods would be streamlined to prevent a horde of angry customers who withdraw their accounts from our bank in search of another, more efficient bank.

2. Describe the two key evaluation factors, RTO and RPO. Is one more important than the other? Explain.

It would be difficult to say that one is more important than the other because I think it would depend on the nature of the specific business as to whether one evaluation factor provides a better outcome. RTO, recovery time objective, is a metric that determines the maximum amount of time that a specific business-related transaction can be allowed to not function without harming the business. RPO, the recovery point objective, measures the volume of "in-process" transactions that can be lost without causing significant harm to business activities.

For example, RTO evaluation might determine that electronic deposit transactions could be delayed for 36 hours without affecting the customer or profitability objectives. As part of the recovery process, 24-36 hours should be the maximum allowed time to be without deposit verification. RPO might determine that only a small amount of transactional data can be lost without causing financial woes, so the recovery efforts must back up and protect these important transactions immediately when a failure occurs. If the bank is large enough, RPO might be more important than RTO; or vice versa.


3. If you were an executive for FleetBoston, would you pursue an information life cycle management effort, or would you recommend continuing to accumulate data, albeit perhaps for other purposes than backup? For what purpose could data be accumulated over many years?

Yes, I believe that the life cycle management efforts are a quality option for ensuring that the appropriate amount and substance of data is kept, rather than constantly backing it up and storing it for years. Any business is going to have outdated data, possibly in need of removing information, say, when an old CEO has left and another has taken his or her position. All of the files associated with the original position, unless mandated by law, would be of little to no use to the firm. In a banking situation, as another example, closed customer accounts may only need, by law, to be kept for 1 year, thus its life cycle is complete and the data can be destroyed once this year has been completed. Life cycle management allows the business to use its storage capacities to store important information while allowing for the discard of old data.

In a banking situation, as the most appropriate example, data can accumulate for years about records of customer activities, to satisfy taxation (IRS) requirements, or even to show bank marketers which periods their advertising efforts met with the most open customer accounts. This type of data, if stored properly, would allow any business professional to review past performance and propose changes when consumer trends are observed. My point: Discarding old data is not always the right option in a business where observing past performance is a routine occurrence or where the law often steps in to find out information that is oftentimes two or three years old. Read More