Sunday, October 21, 2007

Disaster Recovery Plan

Overview of the Project Plan

The Disaster Recovery Plan for my company will document the plan for recovery if any or all parts of the business operations become unusable due to natural, technological, legal, and/or environmental disasters. We will document the areas in which we feel disasters may occur in a variety of areas, such as electrical, telecommunications, records, data, PC data, legal, and safety. We will document the current inventory and potential disaster and then ways to address those concerns.

Getting Started

First, we will form a planning committee that will compile a disaster recovery plan. Since the company is small, all employees will be involved in this process in an ongoing manner. Each employee will contribute ideas to their area of expertise and participate in brainstorming about other areas. The following list will be modified and updated yearly or on an as needed basis.

Assessing and Identifying Risks

Electrical: Power outages, backup power for lights, computers, heating, cooling, frig

Telecommunication: Telephones, fax machine, computer networks, printing

Records: Invoices, receipts, license, legal contracts, regulatory

Data: Data networks and backup

PC data: End-user pc, data backup, viruses, hacker, security

Safety: Fire, employs, and customers

Other: Theft, natural disaster

Building the Recovery Plan (and the interim plan)

For each of the assessments, we will brainstorm ideas on how address the associated risks so it has the least impact on the business. This information will be documented and recorded and maintained yearly and on an as needed basis with employee signatures and detailed information for each risk and implementation of its plan. The plan will be an electronic and paper file copy, and an electronic file at the president and VPs home computers.

The plan will address the following info for each of the above assessments and risks. For example:


Essential

Needed

Nice

Handy

Electrical


x



Etc.





Each item within each assessment will be further divided into its components parts and its risks will be further identified. The plan will then address the plan for each risk and the plan to be implemented to recovery from each risk. For example:


Risk

Plan

Implementation

Electrical

Fire

Electrical Fire Safety Rules,

limit power cords per outlet, Multiple fire extinquishers


Power outage

Backup


Determine if need power backup


Etc.




Recognizing and Taking Control of Crisis

Once a crisis occurs, we will adhere to the following steps:

1. Contain the crisis

2. Be decisive and communicate

3. Resolve the crisis

4. Avoid blame

5. Learn from the crisis

Writing down and Testing the Plan

The disaster recovery plan will be written in an abbreviated but thorough table form using information mapping techniques for quick reference and in a text version. The plan will be tested yearly or on an as needed basis, such as when a disaster occurs, and based on what we have learned from the disaster, we will update the plan.

References

M. Wallace, and L. Webber. 2004. Disaster Recovery Handbook, American Management Association, New York. Amacon.

Harvard Business Essentials series. 2004. Manager’s Toolkit: The 13 Skills Managers Need to Succeed.