Disaster Planning: The Basics

1
Disaster Planning The Basics

• TEAJF Statewide Grantee Meeting
• Houston
• July 20, 2006

2
Whats in a Name?

• Disaster Recovery
• Process for resuming business after a disruptive
  event which can include something as catastrophic
  as a hurricane or as relatively small as a
  computer virus.

• Business Continuity
• A more comprehensive approach to making sure you
  can keep making money or providing a service
  regardless of external events.
• More palatable term for many business executives.

Terms are often married under the acronym BC/DR
3
Business Impact Analysis

• Identify the most crucial systems and processes.
• Analyze the effect an outage would have on your
  ability to perform the service.
• The more dependent the service performance is on
  the process, the more you will want to invest in
  a backup strategy for that process.
• A BIA helps set a restoration sequence.

4
Elements of the Plan

• Locating People
• Communication
• Establishing where they will go to work.
• Establishing what processes will be used so that
  employees can keep doing their jobs.
• Data preservation and management.

5
Write People into the Plan

• Plan MUST establish a process for locating and
  communicating with employees.
• Naturally, employees will put family first.
• Employees may be UNABLE to make it in.
• Or unable to make it OUT (safe and fed).
• Need a plan that does not require immediate
  assistance of employees local to the event.
• Counseling for the longer term people are the
  business and their needs cant be ignored.

6
Body of the Disaster Plan

• Emergency information sheet
• Introduction to the plan
• Communication plan (or "telephone tree")
• Institution-wide collection priorities
• Prevention/protection strategy
• Checklist of pre-disaster actions
• Instructions for response and recovery 

7
Plan Appendices

• Recovery team members
• Collection priorities within departments,
  locations, and/or subject areas
• Checklists for prevention/protection
  inspections extra copies of forms to be used.
• Resource lists
• Accounting information

8
Plan Appendices

• Response and recovery instructions
• Instructions for long-term rehabilitation
• Record-keeping forms 
• Detailed building plans 

9
Plan Appendices

• Insurance information
• Location of keys

10
Lessons from Nimda Virus

• Be Prepared.
• Plan as if your IT people will be unavailable.
• Prioritize.
• Pick your team carefully.
• Develop information-gathering templates.
• Have a well-defined communication plan.
• Know who your stars are.
• Manage user expectations.
• Remind users that there was life before the
  internet.
• Check the pulse of your staff.

11
Potential Pitfalls

• Inadequate planning for IT systems failures.
• Failure to bring the service side into the
  planning and testing of your recovery efforts.
• Failure to gain support from senior-level
  managers so that you have sufficient
• Resources to implement and test plan
• Regular testing of plan
• Commitment to regularly update plan