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Backup For Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Now Easier
 Quantum
Corp. a global specialist in backup, recovery and archive, announced two new
product releases designed to help end users solve the challenges of data backup
and recovery across distributed environments by improving local data protection
and disaster recovery (DR) while streamlining management and reducing costs. The
latest addition of disk backup solutions with deduplication and replication, the
appliance is optimized for remote and branch office environments that are part
of a distributed enterprise. The other software product release provides new
centralized, multi-tier management and reporting capabilities for unifying
backup resources, including disk and tape.
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Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Basics
The basics
of a Disaster
Recovery Business Continuity Plan are defined in the Janco Disaster Recovery
Business Continuity Template. They are:
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Develop the contingency planning policy
statement. A formal department or agency policy provides the
authority and guidance necessary to develop an effective contingency
plan.
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Conduct the business impact analysis
(BIA). The BIA helps to identify and prioritize critical IT
systems and components.
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Identify preventive controls. Measures
taken to reduce the effects of system disruptions can increase system
availability and reduce contingency life cycle costs.
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Develop recovery strategies. Thorough
recovery strategies ensure that the system may be recovered quickly and
effectively following a disruption.
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Develop an IT contingency plan. The
contingency plan should contain detailed guidance and procedures for restoring
a damaged system.
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Plan testing, training and exercises.
Testing the plan identifies planning gaps, whereas training prepares recovery
personnel for plan activation; both activities improve plan effectiveness and
overall agency preparedness.
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Plan
maintenance. The plan should be a living document that is updated regularly to
remain current with system enhancements.
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New Devices Make Backup Easier to Implement
Backup and recovery
while complex may be easier as media vendors release new advanced products.
While many external drives now come with a physical push-button backup option, a
new genre of backup devices is emerging one-touch USB flash drives that combine
the convenience of small size with relatively sophisticated backup applications
for data protection.
The latest
to arrive is the SanDisk Ultra Backup USB Flash Drive,
which combines push-button backups with SanDisk's U3 smart-drive technology that
allows a user to store Windows PC user preferences, profiles and settings as
well as download and launch a limited number of applications from the flash
drive.
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Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Templates Addresses Mid-sized Requirement
Mid-sized businesses have long
struggled to protect their IT systems. Many firms are inadequately protected and
mistakenly think that a disaster is rare and will not happen to them anytime
soon. There is a lot of confusion
and misunderstanding regarding what disaster recovery encompasses and how to
implement it effectively. The Janco
Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Temple provides CIO and CFO with
tools that address minor and major disaster scenarios. This template also
clarifies what true disaster recovery means and how backup and high availability
are not true DR solutions. Janco studies the newest technology trends, such as
virtualization and storage replication, which make powerful DR solutions
attainable and affordable even for mid-sized businesses.
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What is critical in creating a DRP BCP that works?
Good disaster recovery planning is about
identifying those processes and resources that are truly critical, developing
realistic recovery objectives for them and then developing a plan that can
achieve those objectives as simply and cost-effectively as possible.
The reality
is that a sophisticated DR plan
that is too complex or expensive to properly maintain and test is worse than
a plan that only does the minimum because it gives a false sense of
security.
CIOs must make the right
decisions in order to develop an effective, executable plan that allows their
organization to create a process which will help them to recover critical
enterprise functions after a disaster.
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Backup Service Providers May Not Be Enough
Your data is only as safe as its most recent backup. But what happens when you have worked on
your laptop with enterprise critical data and it is lost or damaged. You data is only as redundant as the
integrity of the data that you have stored on your servers, but in this case you
may have a compliance issue that you have not addressed. For companies that
service customers in the cloud, if they cannot offer 99.9999% uptime and
absolutely ensure data backup and restoration, they might as well not be in
business.
There are a few issues at hand here. Not only must
the backup provider
ensure that the data is accurately and securely backed up whereby every
packet and byte is accounted for, but you must also ensure that when the time
comes, the data is "clean" enough to be plugged back into the system without a
hiccup. It's the hiccup that companies need to avoid which is why they look for
ways to backup their data to begin with, however they aren't always as proactive
as the results they were expecting.
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CIOs see Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Budgets Slashed
Many CIOs
have seen their disaster
recovery budget for 2009 slashed and are wondering how they can recover when
a disaster occurs. CIOs are now
looking for solution that that will not cost any money upfront. CIOs feel they
can get money to recover if they have solution in place. CIOs cannot sit idly by
while they roll out critical services without the safety net of Disaster Recovery / Business
Continuity Plan in place - that is like skiing without a helmet or driving a
car with no seat belt. For most, there is a very good chance that nothing bad
will happen, but if something does go wrong, the consequences can be so severe
that the overall risk is unacceptable.
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Recovery Time Objective (RTO) Defined
The two most common metrics for
business continuity solutions are Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery
Point Objective (RPO). RTO measures the window of time when service is
unavailable and RPO represents the amount of data lost as measured in time
before the failure.
For example, organizations that use
tape backup for Exchange recovery typically perform a full backup weekly and a
differential backup nightly. If the introduction of a new software patch
destabilizes an application server and it takes 2 hours to restore the server
from the differential backup and put it back into operation, an RTO of 2 hours
is achieved. However, it is likely that some hours of log files will need to be
replayed to bring the RPO down to zero from the time of the last
backup.
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How a CIO should chose a backup site
  Disasters cost
money, interrupt business operations and may cause the enterprise or government
agency to fail, which makes planning a business continuity issue. Disasters can
interfere with or even terminate IT and communications services. It does not
matter whether the disaster affects the enterprise, government or service
provider. Floods, fire, volcanoes, earthquakes and other events can destroy a
primary and backup site if they are too close together.
Telecom
service providers can offer expert advice on where to locate a backup facility
and should position themselves with CIOs to offer both consulting and services.
After all, they have experience planning for their own primary and backup
facilities, as well.
A CIO's
selection of the backup site location will always have risks and liabilities
attached to the decision. Adequate and reliable communications to the backup
site and communications between the primary and backup sites are what most
service providers can successfully offer to the CIO.
  
In choosing
a backup site, CIO's must first determine how big a disaster plan for and budget
for it. The level of disaster planning increases as you goes down the following
list:
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Building closed/evacuated
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Loss of
power
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Loss of
communications
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Facility damaged/destroyed
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Community disaster (10-to-30 mile range)
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Regional disaster (30-to100 mile range)
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Overlooked items in many Business Continuity Plans
 Traditional business continuity and disaster recovery address
issues related to preparing the IT department and the office infrastructure to
function. The typical policies, procedures, and process that deal with data
backup and recovery, distributed data centers with redundant capacity, and
preparedness plans for the technical staff. Are that are often overlooked
are:
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Surge in remote connections - As employees and
contractor turn into mobile workers, the volume of remote connections
increases sharply placing more demand on the IT infrastructure. The support
group must have ways to set up new mobile users quickly and give them access
rights to the proper resources within the enterprise network.
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First-time mobile users support - Technical
support and IT staffs will be called upon to assist employees whose only
experience has been using computers on a corporate LAN. Support staffs should
trained and implement tools that make remote support
easier.
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Disaster Recover Process Defined
Preparation
for Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity in light of SOX has two primary
parts. The first is putting systems in place to completely protect all financial
and other data required to meet the reporting regulations and to archive the
data to meet future requests for clarification of those reports. The second is
to clearly and expressly document all these procedures so that in the event of a
SOX audit, the auditors clearly see that the DRP exists and will appropriately
protect the data.
Analize
- Define
business continuity and what it means to your
enterprise
- Understand
the impact of a potential disaster
- Differentiate
location vs. data destruction disasters
- Calculate
the cost of downtime
Document
- Know
your recovery objectives; define the parts of the plan
- Outline
what your business needs to get back up and running
Evaluate
- Continuous
vs. Periodic Replication
- Weigh
the complexities, the costs of replication technology
- Improve
the backup process with a formal backup and retention
policy
Implement
- Pick
the technology that best meets your enterpriseÂ’s
objectives
- Test
rigorously
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Security When Business Continuity Plan is Turned On
Have you tested to see if your company's information
protected by the security policy and solutions you have in place now work when
you execute your disaster recovery business continuity plan ? Are you in full
compliance with PCI-DSS, SOX, GLBA and HIPAA regulations, while also complying
with your state's information security laws?
 
Federal and state rules enforcing the electronic security of
personal information are becoming stricter and more complicated. As a result,
companies are reexamining the way they deal with sensitive information to avoid
the lawsuits, fines and loss of business reputation associated with a security
breach.
Still,
despite business's efforts to step up their security protocols, in 2007:
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More
than 79 million personal electronic records containing data such as Social
Security numbers and credit-card numbers were compromised in the U.S.
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This
was nearly four times the number reported in 2006. (Source: New State Laws
Enforcing Encryption, MessageLabs Whitepaper, Nov.
2008)
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more information
Alternative Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Solutions
An
alternative to traditional disaster recovery and business continuity planning
solutions is needed to meet a number of new and growing business requirements
including:
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Workers
increasingly need to collaborate to get their work done
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Data
must be protected from identity theft and to meet new privacy laws
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Security
software needs updating to parry evolving security threats
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more information
High Availability and Disaster Recovery Business continuity Planning
High
availability of enterprise systems is a prerequisite for business continuity and
or sustaining services to an organizationÂ’s end users and end customers.
Achieving high availability during a period of rapid technology change or
economic downturn can be challenging for many enterprises, which see too many
obstacles to ensuring high availability across many servers and across the
enterprise.
The
process of IT transformation brings new opportunities to improve high
availability, especially for end-to-end applications that span the enterprise
and that leverage the computing power of many servers across the network. That
is because IT transformation opens the door to doing things differently breaking
down the information silos that prevented a deeper integration across business
units and a unified view of all networked servers. In so doing, there is also an
opportunity to reduce server footprints via workload consolidation resulting in
more efficient computing and in reduced power/cooling costs. In the process of
IT transformation, IT infrastructure is optimized so that workloads run on the
platforms that support them with the best performance and the greatest
efficiency.
Enterprises that want to ensure that end users are able to access
key enterprise systems on a 24 x 7 x 365 basis, with little or no perceptible
downtime, are studying ways to protect important applications by applying
reliable server hardware and high availability software to the workloads being
deployed. Efficiency in operating these systems is essential to holding down
operational costs associated with IT staff time, system downtime, and
power/cooling for deployed systems.
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Tape Backup Hinders Many Disaster Plans
Effective disaster planning and business continuity planning has
historically been out of reach for many small and medium sized businesses
because it was too costly and complicated. While large companies could afford
expensive hardware solutions, the highly trained staff to manage them, duplicate
data centers, channel extenders, and expensive replication software, small and
medium sized businesses are often limited to making backup tapes and carting
them to the storage administratorÂ’s basement for safe keeping.
While tape backup remains a good long-term
archiving method for many organizations, numerous problems limit its usefulness
including:
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Backup windows are shrinking – due to the
huge growth in data volumes, requirements for longer retention and faster
access, and generally greater reliance on data and technology.
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Backup is not easy or quick, many
organizations cannot backup often enough to adequately protect themselves –
backing up once a week leaves a lot of data vulnerable.
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Tape is not the most reliable medium –
hardware failures, media failures, and human errors are common. Tape
management is a constant IT headache and administrative costs are
high.
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Metrics for Organizations with no Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Plan
According to Janco Associates, an International Disaster
Recovery - Business Continuity consultancy the most common form of enterprise
wide disaster is related to power outages.
Janco has found that in disaster recovery and business continuity cases
it has reviewed the following is true:
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Over one third companies take more than a day to recover from a major
power outage caused by events like hurricanes and extensive
disasters.
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Over eleven percent of companies take more than a week to recover from
these events.
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The typical time to reconfigure a network that has not been planned for
can take up to 72 hours - if the resources are available.
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Data that is lost (not backup up electronically) can take weeks to
re-enter if there is paper trail and if there is none the data can be lost
forever.
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Over 85 percent of companies that experience a computer disaster and do
not have a Disaster Recovery - Business Continuity Plan go out of business
within 18 months.
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What You Need to Know Before Creating Your Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Plan
 There are a number of standard answers that are needed
before your create a Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Plan. They are:
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Current critical business
processes
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Specific recovery time and recovery point
objectives
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List
of key personnel involved in the D/R
process
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List
of personnel needing information access after the
disaster
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How
personnel will access information – from home, from a secondary data center,
from a leased facility
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What
systems, applications, and data will be required, and for how
long
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Chronologically, how far back you need data to conduct business
as if the disaster never
occurred
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Water Damage Is the Most Frequent Form of Disaster
While water damage is the
most common form of disaster, every enterprise with assets of
needs a good fire-protection system. Since most emergencies seem to happen
outside normal working hours, reliable fire detection systems on professional,
twenty-four-hour monitors are a wise investment. Wherever possible, assets
should also be protected by a fire-suppression system. The use of halon is no
longer recommended. Professionals now recommend wet-pipe sprinklers for
most enterprise record archives. In addition, water misting
suppression systems have become available within the last several years; these
can provide fire suppression using much less water than conventional sprinkler
systems. Before choosing a fire-protection system, be sure to contact
a professional or a fire-protection consultant for information about the
latest developments in fire protection and for advice appropriate to your
enterprise.
All fire-protection systems should be designed and
installed by professionals with experience in servicing enterprise of your type,
because the needs of your type of business differ from the needs for
others.
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How the credit crunch has impacted the Disaster Planning and Business Continuity Process in Enterprises
In a survey
of our JancoÂ’s clients 67 percent said that the financial crisis and the credit
crunch has had an impact on business continuity planning in their organizations.
Over one third of our clients reported that it had had a negative
impact.
Medium
sized organizations reported the most impact on business continuity activities,
with over forty percent reporting a negative impact. While only one third of
large organizations reported a negative impact and one fifth of small
organizations did.
Large organizations were most likely to state
that the global financial crisis and the credit crunch had had a positive impact
on business continuity activities.
Regional
differences were quite striking, those located in the United States were the
most badly impacted and Western Europe-based organizations apparently being
least affected, closely followed by UK organizations.
The
following shows the percentage of regional respondents who said that the global
financial crisis and the credit crunch was having a negative impact on business
continuity planning in their organization:
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United
States: 52 percent
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Western
Europe: 28 percent
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United
Kingdom: 35 percent
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South
East Asia: 47 percent
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Canada:
48 percent
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Pacific
(Including Australia): 49 percent
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more information
Disaster Recovery Planning
Every
business and organization can experience a serious incident which can prevent it
from continuing normal operations. This this can happen any day at any time. The
potential causes are many and varied: flood, explosion, computer malfunction,
accident, grievious act... the list is endless. The Disaster Recovery Planning Template is designed to help you plan for
these scenarios. They will help you reduce both the risk and impact should the
worst occur. The Disaster Recovery
Planning Template is intended to be a launch pad for those seeking help
with the business continuity planning process. It offers information, guidance,
tips, and links to a range of resources.
Creating a disaster recovery plan is considerably
simplified by use of this template. Using detailed questionnaires and
checklists, this MS-Word toolkit will help you create and review both your
contingency practices and recovery arrangements.
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more information
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