This Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) can be
used as a template for any enterprise. The template and supporting material
have been updated to be Sarbanes-Oxley compliant. The Disaster
Planning Template comes as a Word document and includes:
-
Disaster Recovery Plan
Template
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Business and IT Impact
Analysis Questionnaire
-
Work Plan
-
Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Audit Program
New with version (version
history) are (Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO
27000 Compliant):
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Web Site Disaster Recovery Planning Form
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Department Disaster Recovery Activation Workbook
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Quick Reference Guide
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Team Alert List (Form)
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DRP Team Responsibilities
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DRP Team Checklist
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Critical Function(s) Definition
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Normal Business Hour Response Procedures
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After Hours Response Procedures
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DRP Location(s) Definition
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DRP Recovery Procedures
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Notification Procedures
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Notification Call List (Form)
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Vendor Disaster Recovery Questionnaire
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Vendor Phone List Form Updated
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Key Customer Notification Form
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Critical Resources to be Retrieved Form
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Business Continuity Off-Site Materials Form
Included in the template is Business Impact Questionnaire
as well as a full Job Description for the Disaster Recovery Manager.
The premium edition contains 11 full job descriptions.
Clients can also subscribe to Janco's DRP update service and
receive all updates to the DRP Template for 18 months* from the date
of purchase.
The DRP template is over 200 pages and includes
everything needed to customize the Disaster Recovery Plan to fit your specific
requirement. The electronic document includes proven written text and
examples for the following major sections of a disaster recovery plan:
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Plan
Introduction
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Business Impact
Analysis - including a sample impact matrix
-
DRP Organization
Responsibilities pre and post disaster - drp checklist
-
Backup Strategy
for Data Centers, Departmental File Servers, Wireless Network
servers, Data at Outsourced Sites, Desktops (In office and "at
home"), Laptops and PDA's.
-
Recovery
Strategy
including approach, escalation plan process and decision points
-
Disaster
Recovery Procedures
in a check list format
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Plan
Administration
Process
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Technical
Appendix including definition of necessary phone numbers and
contact points
-
Job Description
for Disaster Recovery Manager (3 pages long) - entire disaster
recovery team job descriptions are available.
-
Work Plan
to modify and implement the template. Included is a
list of deliverables for each task.
There is a extensive
section that show how a full test of the DRP can be conducted. It
includes
-
Disaster
Recovery Manager Responsibilities
-
Distribution
of the Disaster Recovery Plan
-
Maintenance
of the Business Impact Analysis
-
Training
of the Disaster Recovery Team
-
Testing
of the Disaster Recovery Plan
-
Evaluation
of the Disaster Recovery Plan Tests
-
Maintenance
of the Disaster Recovery Plan
Testimonial -
Dave Baker - City of Hamilton -
I have found
the DRP template invaluable!
Testimonial -
Bob Rifenbury -MCSE/CCNA Lauch
Testing Lab -
The DRP Template saved me about 6 months of work!
Testimonial - Kelly Keeler -
Martin's Point Health Care -
I have received and I began using the template
immediately. IT IS GREAT! Made this process a snap for me. Cut my
documentation time down from.
weeks to hours! This document has made,
what began to be an overwhelming process turn into a snap!
Testimonial -
Juan Stamos - Mexico City
Corporation -
We had a DRP in place, but
needed a more user friendly structure. The Disaster Recovery Template (Gold
edition) has that structure. It was very easy to quickly move our DRP into
Janco's DRP Template -- a real added value.
* Update service is for 12 months unless it is purchased within 30
days of the purchase of the Template. Janco reserves the right
to validate purchase of the customer was made for the template.
This template is
not for resale or re-distribution -
Disaster Recovery Planning Template
Disaster Recovery
Template, Disaster Recovery
Site Map
What Should a Data Center Disaster Plan Have
What
should a Data Center Disaster Plan Have? Janco has found that a go
Disaster Recovery Plan should have:
-
A section
that describes the strategy and procedures for recovering Data
Center processing of applications should a disaster substantially disrupt
operations.
-
The disaster recovery plan should
ben organized into three parts: the main body which provides a general
description of the disaster recovery strategy and program, the appendices
provide detailed information for conducting the recovery, and the attachments
provide supplemental information. The main body is public information and may
be freely distributed; the appendices and attachments contain sensitive
information that is restricted to the individuals responsible for recovering
Data Center operations. The appendices and attachments must be destroyed when
updated versions are received.
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The plan is frequently updated to
reflect current hardware, software, procedures, applications, and staffing.
Revisions are distributed to the disaster recovery team members at least twice
a year following the disaster recovery tests.
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more info
There is More to Disaster Planning Than Creating Backup Files
The
definition of the necessary level of data backup and restoration processes are
crucial components of business continuity and disaster recovery planning. But
they are not the only factors that the enterprise and its IT organizations need
to consider when defining the strategy they will use in protecting critical data
against various disasters including unforeseen events such as severe weather,
natural disasters or power failures. They also need to take into account
applications, servers, networks, communications, work spaces, and the people who
run the applications.
How can
organizations effectively evaluate their business continuity needs and ensure
that the technologies in place are effective? One key step is to conduct a
business impact analysis which examines all the business functions and assesses
the damage if a function suffers outages. Storage systems - and more
specifically the data thats stored in them - are extremely relevant for
business continuity. But so are the applications, servers, networks and people
who run the applications.
Metric for
business continuity and disaster recovery include timelines for recovery point
objectives (RPOs) and factors defined as recovery time objectives (RTOs). For data to be available when needed, it
needs to be replicated to a remote site. Depending on the desired RPO, that
could be synchronous or asynchronous data transfer. In some cases it could be a
combination of data that is replicated synchronously to a location that is
geographically close and then asynchronously replicated to an out-of-region
recovery center.
But data is only part of the equation.
Servers, networks and other IT components also play a major role. Just having
the data replicated might be okay for a disaster recovery environment with
longer acceptable recovery time objectives. The high cost of storage, communications,
network access, and software replication are just a few of the challenges in
implementing adequate business continuity. For a complete real business continuity
plan, more than just the data needs to be replicated and available at a
secondary site - employee workstations, communication, servers, and applications
need to be available. Only with a complete business continuity and disaster
recovery plan and strategy in place can organizations ensure continuous
operation of the enterprise and availability of vital information.
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more info
Risk Assessment is First Step in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning
The
first step in creating a disaster recovery plan (see Disaster Recovery Plan
Template Business Continuity - http://www.e-janco.com/DisasterPlanning.htm) is conducting a risk analysis of your business
operation, (see Threat Vulnerability Assessment -
Sarbanes Oxley 
Compliance Tool - http://www.e-janco.com/threat.htm) computer applications, and your computer
systems. List all the possible
risks that threaten the continuity of your business operations, system uptime,
and evaluate how imminent they are in your particular IT entity. Anything that
can cause a system outage is a threat, from relatively common man-made threats
like virus attacks and accidental data deletions (most common occurrence) to
more rare natural threats like floods and fires. Determine which of your threats
are the most likely to occur and prioritize them using a simple system: rank
each threat in two important categories, probability and impact. In each
category, rate the risks as low, medium, or high.
For
example, a small distribution company (revenues of $25,000,000) located in
Florida could rate a hurricane an
high probability with a high impact, an earthquake threat as low probability and
high impact, while the threat of utility failure due to a power outage could
rate high probability and high impact. So in this company's risk analysis, a
hurricane and power outage would be a higher risk than an earthquake and would
therefore be a higher priority in the disaster recovery
plan.
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more info
Disaster Recovery Communication Requirements Defined
Disaster Recovery Planning requires a communication network in
place that meets at least the following requirements:
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Voice: It would be absolutely essential for
disaster recovery personnel to communication with one another on a common
voice channel. A useful service in this regard is provided by the push-to-talk
voice call system that has been incorporated by the GSM standard in its Phase
2+ version as an additional service. The push-to-talk system enables an almost
instant voice connection to be setup between the speaker and the intended call
recipients, thus saving precious time in emergency situations.
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Data: Disaster
recovery personnel at the disaster site must be able to exchange data with the
Remote Command Center in real time. Further, the personnel must be able to
exchange data with one another. Lastly, they should be able to connect to the
public internet and possibly to a remote third party via a secure
link.
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Location information: Each of the disaster
recovery personnel at the disaster site must be able to see the locations of
all other active personnel in a specified area, relative to their own
positions. This service may prove crucial in situations where in a worker want
to warn nearby workers of dangerous conditions (e.g. collapsing buildings
after an earthquake) or wants to request backup for immediate help in rescuing
disaster victims.
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more info
Staff Training Critical for Business Continuity
A statistic that may be alarming to those with
remote locations who may not be properly managing the storage at those sites is
that up to 80 percent of the information deemed "important" to "critical" for
the average multiple-location business resides in their branch offices. That
means the office manager, salesperson, or computer-savvy marketing guy is
responsible for 80 percent of the companys future! Whether that person takes
vacation, business trip, gets too busy or simply forgets to perform the nightly
backup, your data is at risk.
Even if the job is assigned to the most responsible person in the
entire company the person whos always around there's no guarantee that the
job will be done correctly, consistently, or in a timely manner across sites.
The office manager at one site may have a different method than the inside sales
representative in another location. The marketing manager at a third site may
perform the task with less consistency than the other
two.
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more info
