Disaster Recovery Planning - Essay Example

Disaster Recovery Planning No matter how careful a company is while making plans to curtail all the riskswhich can create a disaster for the organization, there are things which are beyond the control of any human being that can create disasters. Recovering from the disaster and continuing operations remain important concerns for the organization and that is where disaster recovery planning comes into play. My organization is mainly concerned with health care therefore there are several well established scenarios which can come into play with disaster recovery. However, the focus of my organization seems to be more concerned with recovering from a disaster and providing assistance when a disaster hits the area rather than recovering from a disaster which hits the organization itself. The changing situation of the world and the realities which we live in a post 9/11 world has made sure that essential services such as police and hospitals continue to function in situations where the disaster is created rather than imposed. While the organization has plans on how to deal with storms, weather disasters and other calamities, the focus of the body is more on providing assistance to others rather than understanding how it can continue to function even if the building becomes inaccessible. However, it seems that the people at the organization understand that a continuity plan is simply essential for handling situations when our greatest fears are turned into reality. For these situations we have a continuity plan which comes into play when internal or external factors make it necessary for us to resort to emergency actions in order to continue providing services. In our case, the level of the threat and the level of the disaster will engage our continuity plan to the level required. For example, if our database integrity is damaged or information security is compromised we can use backups which are stored on location or restore from an earlier point in the week from our offsite data backup location. This process is in line with the suggestions made by Britt (2005) who recommends a modular stepwise plan for disaster recovery as being the most effective. That is how our continuity plan functions once an assessment about the disaster has been made. Since the disaster recovery plan is working on several layers, the responsibility of making the plan work is also distributed amongst the authorities at the organization. For example, if we had a breach of security with our data, the IT department would be directly involved as well as the other departments where the concerned data was placed. Finance, if it were financial data, human resources if it were HR data etc. Of course such an attack might not necessitate us to switch our base of operations but in a situation where there is a requirement for an evacuation, then the recovery plan has to be escalated depending on how the evacuation takes place. For example, if there is a fire in the building which damages it to an extent that service becomes impossible to provide, there is a plan to relocate the clients to other bodies in the area. If a part of the building is damaged then secondary access points and service locations can be used where we can continue to provide services and maintain our operations depending on the level of the damage we have suffered. Similarly, a viral outbreak or an epidemic may require us to work harder than normal to help out the clients which come to us for support in which case double shifts may become necessary until the area has recovered from the disaster. As noted by Gouldson (2002), our organization recognizes that continuity plans, are essential for a smooth recovery from disaster but the focus of our recovery plans remain accidental disasters which come from floods, hurricanes or natural causes which provide us with advance warning. These give us a few days or even a few hours to ensure that everything is in place to counter the affects of the expected disaster. However, for situations where there is no advance warning, such as a mistake made by an employee in backing up information or a sudden power outage, the level of recovery planning which is in place seems to be variable. We have backup generators and can run them for a period of 24 hours without power from the grid but there seems to be a general lack of training and awareness regarding recovery from disasters such as data loss. Hurricane Katrina certainly taught us a lot of lessons since many companies were left in the lurch as they could not recover from the affects of the massive hurricane (Mearian, 2005). To counter such situations, our organization has established redundant lines of communication to create better coordination amongst executives and those who are in charge of the situation when a disaster comes. Key employees know how to get in touch with each other and this improves our chances of continuing to provide necessary services. In essence, our organization has understood the fact that accidents and disasters may happen in any location at any given time. The lessons learnt from the September 11th attacks on the Twin Towers have been noted by businesses and their recovery plans are given top by the managers who wish to keep their organization operational (Berman, 2002). Insofar as our organization is concerned, while we have effective plans in place for some types of disasters, there are some which may require additional planning and creative thinking before we can say that we are ready for all types of disasters. This condition puts at some level of risk since we deal with healthcare and the risk of a disaster is more than the loss of uptime. It can mean the loss of life and the suspension of essential services which can help the entire region to come out of a disaster situation quickly. Works Cited Berman, A. (2002). Lessons Learned: The Aftermath of September 11. Information Systems Security, 11(2), 30-31, Britt, P. (2005). Taking Steps for Disaster Recovery. Information Today, 22(9), 1-21. Gouldson, T. (2002). The Plan to Master Disaster. Computing Canada, 28(2), 12-14. Mearian, L. (2005). Financial Firms Create Disaster Recovery Standards. Computerworld, 39(38), 8-9. Word Count: 1,045 Read More