4 responses 03/19

Raja Work:

The Disaster Recovery Plan is part of the contingency plans that organizations create to prepare for adverse events that could affect the productivity or daily operations of the workplace. To create a disaster recovery plan, an organization must understand the use of the plan, the creation process, and the types of possible adverse events. “Disaster Recovery planning is a topic receiving increasing attention in recent issues of computer–related publications. The growing numbers of organizations are becoming aware of the need for such planning but admit they have taken little action because of that awareness” (Maitra, Shanker, & Mudholkar, 2011).

            The necessity for a disaster recovery plan is currently making its way into the consciousness of computing facilities at educational institutions. The developers of a disaster recovery plan in an academic setting, however, are faced with obstacles above and beyond those confronting developers in a more business–oriented setting. Most of the literature on the topic is not directed at an academic environment and thus the concepts are hard to transfer. In contrast to businesses, which often run a limited number of applications and have a limited set of users, academic computing centers are generally service organizations serving thousands of users, each running different applications.

            Contingency planning is an “overall process of preparing for unexpected adverse events.” “The goal of contingency plans is to restore businesses back to their normal operations after a disaster has occurred. Contingency plans can be broken down into four components: business impact analysis, incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity” (Rohde & Haskett, 1990). Of the four components, disaster recovery should be considered one of the most important parts of the contingency plans to an organization.

            In the financial organization, I am working for, the infrastructure team handled the disaster recovery and plan the disaster recovery events which helps us to recover immediately. The Disaster Recovery Planning must also include considerations for the physical property of the organization. Information is an important piece to the core of the organization, but the physical property is the home for the information to reside and be used in. failure to keep the physical assets secured or backed up will slowly, but surely, ruin the organization.

            On a different note, DRP’s are usually reactive; they are not enabled unless an adverse event proved to be too much for the incident response plan to handle. As a result of the reactive role of disaster recovery, proper preparation and creation of the plans must be considered by the organization. If the disaster requires computing to be done at the alternate site, it is likely that circumstances will not allow everyone to use this facility. A DRP must be specific to the environment that the place of operations is located. Furthermore, the environment that organizations must be aware of is not just their physical location, but also, they must account for their online presence. The allocation of resources for disaster recovery will always be a touchy subject for organizations.

            “Different software and leading virtualization industry companies have combined efforts to offer some of the most advanced disaster recovery and application availability solutions while reducing the cost and complexity of the IT infrastructure” (Vuong, 2015). Businesses can have complete confidence in the unparalleled data protection, availability, and recoverability of these joint solutions provide while simplifying overall IT management. Finally, disaster recovery will continue to evolve with the banking industry. As banks become more sophisticated technology users, disaster recovery solutions will follow.

References:

Maitra, S., Shanker, M., & Mudholkar, P. K. (2011). Disaster recovery planning with virtualization technologies in the banking industry. Proceedings of the International Conference & Workshop on Emerging Trends in Technology - ICWET '11. doi:10.1145/1980022.1980089

Rohde, R., & Haskett, J. (1990). Disaster recovery planning for academic computing centers. Communications of the ACM, 33(6), 652-657. doi:10.1145/78973.78975

Vuong, J. (2015). Disaster recovery planning. Proceedings of the 2015 Information Security Curriculum Development Conference. doi:10.1145/2885990.2886006

Ram Work:

Digital data has begun to be very valuable in the past few years to support decision-making and uplift a given organization or company's daily operations. "It is important that businesses have a valid strategy to recover their data in the events of fire, hurricanes, other natural disasters, sabotage, or security incidents" (DRI, 2017). In my view, a disaster recovery plan is required in all aspects of human life when a natural disaster occurs and when technical or biological attacks occur. This plan will help governments and companies mobilize and support the disaster and bring back a normal life. So, "these types of disaster recovery plans will eventually come into the bigger picture to start or resume daily functionalities of any company and avoid a huge number of losses and allow the company to manage and run all types of critical tasks and help in maintaining the revenue without affecting their business and their support system functionalities" (Shaw, 2018). The example of disasters is earthquakes, hurricanes, and natural floods or fire incidents. For continuity of company critical business operations, the companies will prepare the plan for handling disasters is the disaster recovery plan. Using this disaster recovery plan, identify the company's critical operations, continue its business operations, and reduce the disaster's impact on company activities. Every company needs to develop a disaster recovery planned document for the handling of natural disaster incidents.

            The disaster recovery planned document includes a list of elements like communication details. Communication is a breakdown with disasters. But the continuity of operations required proper communication between the company and company stakeholders. So the proper communication plan will need to mention in the disaster recovery plan. Another is the inventory or equipment management element. In disasters, for continuity of company business operations need to maintain the required hardware and software equipment.

The IT applications monitor can have a varying level of influence and responsibility depending on your recovery plans and the severity of the disruption. At a minimum, the IT applications monitor should know exactly which application tasks need to be executed based on the restoration plan, including data consistency, application integrations, and configuration. By using risk management, we can manage the possible risks and try to resolve the risks. To prepare an efficient disaster recovery plan, one needs to identify each team member's roles and duties. All the organization members' roles and responsibilities need to clarify disaster recovery plans and avoid miscommunication or confusion issues. Every team member must understand the disaster recovery plan document and identifies the specific responsibilities. "Using disaster recovery plan document and manage the company operations and the emergency response team or incident response team need to identify the emerging functionalities and perform that functionality" (Entech, 2018). In addition to all of these, we also need to identify the important emerging activities and perform the activities. The incident response team should support the handling of disasters, sends the response to all company stakeholders, and avoids communication issues. All these are details about the disaster recovery plan. Without this disaster recovery plan, they cannot handle the disasters in companies and cannot continue their critical business activities. So that "every company essential to develop an efficient disaster recovery plan and avoid disaster problems in companies and try to decrease the impact of disasters in companies" (Schiff, 2016).

 

References

Entech. (2018). 7 Key Elements of a Business Disaster Recovery Plan . Available at:https://entechus.com/7-key-elements-of-a-business-disaster-recovery-plan/.

Schiff. J (2016). 8 ingredients of an effective disaster recovery plan. Available at:https://www.cio.com/article/3090892/8-ingredients-of-an-effective-disaster-recovery-plan.html.

Keith Shaw (Jan 23, 2018). What is disaster recovery planning? How to ensure business continuity. Retrieved from https://www.networkworld.com/article/3411457/what-is-disaster-recovery-how-to-ensure-business-continuity.html

"What is Business Continuity Management", DRI International, 2017.