Disaster Recovery Planning for the Enterprise

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Course Overview

The high availability of mission-critical processes is a major requirement for the viability of the modern organisation. A disaster could negate the capability of the organisation to provide uninterrupted service to its customers.

In this course, you learn to identify vulnerabilities and implement appropriate countermeasures to prevent and mitigate threats. You learn techniques for creating a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and the methodology for building an infrastructure that supports its effective implementation.

Audience

This course is valuable for those managing and maintaining the continuity of an organisation's critical processes or capabilities.

Skills Gained

• Create, document and test continuity arrangements for your organisation
• Perform a risk assessment and Business Impact Assessment (BIA) to identify vulnerabilities
• Select and deploy an alternate site for processing mission-critical activities
• Identify appropriate strategies to recover the infrastructure and processes
• Organise and manage recovery teams
• Test and maintain an effective recovery plan in a rapidly changing technology environment

Course Outline

Introduction and Overview

• Business continuity vs. disaster recovery
• Why a recovery plan is a crucial asset
• Sources of threat
• Government codes and legislative requirements

Measuring Risk and Avoiding Disaster

Assessing risk in the enterprise

• Choosing the assessment method
• The five-step risk process

• Matching the response to the threat

Identifying mission-critical continuity needs

• Evaluating which functions are critical
• Setting priorities based on time horizons
• Prioritising processes and applications

Implementing disaster avoidance

• Avoiding disasters through effective preventive planning
• Creating contingency plans for unavoidable threats

The four-step Business Impact Assessment (BIA)

• Identifying the threat
• Assessing the risk to the enterprise
• Identifying business-critical activities
• Specifying required IT support from technical staff

Designing Recovery Solutions

Establishing a disaster recovery site

• Site choices: configuration and acquisition
• Choosing suppliers: in-house vs. third-party
• Specifying equipment

Selecting backup and restore strategies

• Matching strategy to operational constraints
• Meeting the organisation's storage requirements for vital records

Restoring communications and recovering users

• Determining vital users with the BIA
• Rerouting voice, mail, goods delivery
• Eliminating network single points of failure
• Connecting end users
• Meeting varied user-recovery needs

Implementing a Project Management Approach

Managing and documenting the planning project

• Identifying stakeholders
• Analysing stakeholder needs
• Obtaining the funding commitments
• Defining clear goals at the start

Running the project

• Controlling the project via tracking
• Managing risks and issues
• Testing deliverables

Responding to Disaster

Creating the recovery plan

• Capturing the planning output
• Creating recovery-team charters
• Defining roles and responsibilities
• Responding to recovery scenarios
• Information directories and equipment inventories

Directing the disaster recovery teams

• Planning and conducting Crisis Communications
• Connecting with emergency services
• Team actions following a disaster

Assuring the Plan and Applying Document Management

Rehearsing the business continuity plan

• The reasons for testing the plan
• Considering the impact on the organisation's activities
• Using a step-by-step process to test the plan
• Developing test scenarios and using test results effectively

Maintaining the business continuity plan

• Applying change control: why and how
• Ensuring normal developments are accounted for in the plan
• Scheduling regular reviews
• Applying document management discipline to the plan

Disaster Recovery Planning for the Enterprise / BC-DRE