Hosting Services

DISASTER RECOVERY & BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Disaster Preparedness

Phase I - Information Gathering

1. Organize the Project - Who will be running the project? When does it need to be done? What tasks are involved? What are the objectives and scope of the plan?

2. Conduct Business Impact Analysis - What are the most critical functions or systems in your business/unit? What would be the impact if they were severely interrupted? How long can you manually operate accounting, customer service, sales, etc, if your system is down?

3. Conduct Risk Assessment - Where is the critical system or function performed? What is the probability of this area being severely interrupted?

4. Develop Recovery Strategy - How will you operate during a severe disruption to insure all critical functions can be performed? How will you get your business/unit back up and running?

5. Review Onsite and Offsite Backup / Recovery Procedures - Are you backing up critical information and systems? Where are the backups located? Will they be affected if a fire or flood occurs in your building?

6. Select Alternate Facility - Do you have a location to perform work in the event your facility is destroyed?

Phase II - Writing and Testing the Plan

7. Develop Recovery Plan - Documentation of all components and steps from recognizing a disaster, to performing during recovery, to restoration are compiled.

8. Test the Plan Does the plan work? - Are all contact numbers listed and critical areas detailed?

Phase III - Maintaining and Auditing the Plan (Ongoing)

9. Maintain the Plan - When changes occur in the work force, system, equipment, or process the plan needs to be updated to reflect these changes.

10. Perform Periodic Audit - Have someone outside of your unit review and assess your plan.