Disaster Recovery

Media Madness

Disaster Recovery Plan Overview

By

Loki Consulting, Inc.

Iris Morgan

Heather German

Gwen Northrup

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Loki Consulting, Inc. was established in 1997 as a result of Hurricane Fran. Many businesses were devastated by the storm due to the absence of a disaster recovery plan. Realizing the need for disaster recovery consultation, Loki Consulting, Inc. was created to provide businesses with expert knowledge on implementing a critical component of any organization large or small. Loki Consulting, Inc. has more than 20 years of experience in implementing effective and successful disaster recovery plans.

Media Madness was established in the early 90's as an on-line media store supplying learning materials to private schools. Due to the No Child Left Behind Act, initiated by the Bush Administration, the NC Public School systems were faced with the challenge of providing quality learning resources for children while operating on a fixed budget. Media Madness secured the bid to provide materials to all public school systems within North Carolina, provided that the company incorporates a disaster recovery plan into its business procedures, specifically designed for their data center.

Loki Consulting, Inc. was hired by Media Madness to make recommendations for implementing a disaster recovery plan for their data center. Loki Consulting has scheduled a meeting with Media Madness's Executive Board to present their proposal for a contingency plan. Currently Media Madness does not have a disaster recovery plan in place and recent expansion deemed it necessary to undertake this comprehensive project.

SITUATION ANALYSIS

More and more businesses recognize the importance of having a Disaster Recovery Solution to react to a disaster or other serious events. Creation of a solid disaster recovery plan is the first critical step to ensuring that your business information will survive a disaster. If your business normal operation depends on your IT e-resources (e-mail, web, database), then you need a Disaster Recovery plan. Now is the best time to get started with the help of Loki Consulting, Inc.

Currently, Media Madness does not have a contingency plan for its data center in the event of a natural or intentional disaster such as a tornado, flood, fire, system failure, etc. If a disaster should occur the company would be incapable of recovering any data stored in their data center. All company and customer information would be permanently lost including customer profiles, payment information, customer orders, company hardware and software, vendor profiles, company information, sales, marketing, revenue loss, job loss etc. The company's day-to-day business operations would come to a standstill and ultimately shut down.

Additionally, it would take Media Madness months to recover and resume normal business operations and without a disaster recovery plan the data may never be restored. The worse case scenario would be that the organization never recovers and files bankruptcy leaving all customers, vendors, employees, creditors investors in the dark.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Loki Consulting, Inc. offers selectable methodologies that may be combined for accomplishing a business continuity project. These methods incorporate traditional planning approaches and alternatives. Based on an organizations recovery strategies, wants or needs many combinations of methodologies may be used.

Loki Consulting, Inc. offers a 9-Step Program incorporating organization's wants and needs into an effective and efficient Disaster Recovery Plan (DR Plan). Simply stated, it is identifying business requirements, risks, critical business systems, key personnel, and single points of failure.

The initial start-up phase of the project is the formulation the Project Team. This includes an Executive Sponsor, Project Manager, and additional key personnel. Once identified, the project team should begin the business impact project analysis. Key components of the analysis phase include identifying critical systems and functions and the risks associated with the loss business operations. In addition to the project analysis, a secondary deliverable is developing the recovery strategy. This entails minimizing interruptions to normal operations and prioritizing system restoration. Implementing standard back-up procedures are recommended up to and including alternate storage facilities. (German).

Once all pertinent information is gathered the project team should then begin documenting planned steps and developing their testing strategy. All Disaster Recovery Plans should be documented, printed and bound in hard copies. These copies should be stored in multiple locations and in the possession of key personnel (i.e. homes and secured offices). (German).

The next phase would be developing the testing scenarios and implementing mock drills. A DR Plan that is not continuously refined and validated is almost worthless. In order to maximize the chance for success in the event of a real disaster it is essential that the DR Plan be executed on a regular basis. Specific recovery procedures should generally be tested in-house on a more frequent basis. In addition, staff should be rotated as much as possible, thus providing a more comprehensive test of the process and the plan, and providing trained resources in the event they are ever needed. In order to adequately prepare for the mock drills, Media Madness should practice several disaster recovery scenarios, including power outages, network outages, server outages, etc. Maintaining the DR Plan entails updating changes in the workforce, systems, equipment, or process. Media Madness should conduct periodic audits to identify strengths and weaknesses. Partnering with an external auditing firm will be useful in identifying deficiencies in the DR