Your critical IT Systems have just crashed, what do you do next?
It’s World Backup day today, yes really, I am not making it up! So accepting it is a totally made up concept it is however a good opportunity to take a few minutes out and consider how you would respond to a critical issue.
Consider the following five questions and see how you do:
1) How would you know that you have a critical problem?
Most companies have a DR plan, but how do you know when it is time to get it out of the cupboard? If you need to be back up and running in minutes you have seconds to realise you have an issue and initiate the plan. If you do not have a plan then read on it is even more important to recognize you have a problem.
2) Who has the responsibility to initiate disaster Recovery?
If someone is in overall charge then it is good news, but what if that person isn’t available? Do you have one or more deputies who can take over responsibility and more importantly understand and have access to all they need? A good example is access to the encryption key or passphrase, if the deputies do not have access to the passcode you simply cannot access the backup data and recovery will stop.
3) How confident is that person that disaster recovery will work?
Of course, the key person will be 100% confident of the DR plan, well they were the last time they checked it but has anything changed? When was the last time a disaster recovery test was carried out? Regular testing is essential, especially with a dynamic organisation that is taking advantage of the latest efficiencies in IT deployment, but it takes time, typically out of hours and costs money.
4) Once disaster recovery has been initiated do all of the users know how to get up and running?
Users are focused on the here and now, and so a disaster recovery email they received 12 months ago will be long forgotten. Have your plans included having a sufficient number of technical staff available and ready to answer the simplest of questions about how to connect to failover systems?
5) Once the organisation is in disaster recovery (failover scenario), will everything work as normal?
If your systems are limping along then you are not truly recovered, rather you are still in treatment and need to keep the pressure on getting the issues resolved and switched back.
So with or without a disaster recovery plan these questions should at least give you some things to consider to be better prepared for that fateful day when it actually happens to you!
