Case Study 2: Disaster Recovery (DR) Lessons Learned: September 11th

Disaster Recovery Management

The September 11th attacks affected risk management efforts a prompted an increased justification for recovery based efforts was first the lessons learned from not having a backup data center which should be located not within the same disaster area as the central data center. Having the data centers in the same area of operation as the primary data center would defeat the purpose of having the second data center and if one goes down the other one would surely go down as well. Next lessons learned that affected risk management was organizations were not thinking of their personnel and processes including their Internet Technology before the 911 attacks.

The staff within the organization wasn’t being accounted for within their plans if a disaster should eventually strike. Staff members were needed to take actions once an accident happened and could have done their part in managing all available resources such as the secondary data center. Having key staff in place allows for the organization to initiate its recovery efforts with more accuracy and less downtime when everyone is doing their part in these recovery efforts. Organizations were made very aware of the importance of keeping staff members informed and having them playing a vital role in recovery efforts. Furthermore, the 911 attacks prompted organizations to take notice of how valuable the role staff members would initiate to alleviate the associated risks involved.

Social media has made a big impact as another communication outlet when it comes to disasters. Facebook and Twitter which are two of the most popular social networks which can be utilized to assist emergency personnel in recovery efforts. Twitter once sent out over 20 million tweets during the Hurricane Sandy disaster back in 2013. Using social media allows for faster-paced exchange of information when populations that are affected can take control of the situation. Social media and other platforms of communication creates more room for recovery efforts to take place with using just a smart phone or computer. Organizations need to consider distanced geographic locations while preparing for backup operations because outages are prevalent once a disaster happens.

It is always best to use a recovery location that is located a good distance away from the main site of operations because if the secondary site is in the same vicinity it might end up becoming damaged or destroyed as well. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) would pose a great impact on recovery efforts because of tracking the time intervals to know when time has actually passed after a major incident pertaining to data loss or if it has exceeded and surpassed the tolerance allowed. A good example of the RPO process would be a system data outage that has been out for 18 hours and the RPO could be 21 hours so the business is still within the parameters of their plan. The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) can be utilized in recovery site distanced plans in order to set specific times that business processes be restored after a disruption occurs.

The RPO gives an idea of how much data would need to be recovered or re-entered once a network goes down. Utilizing the secondary distanced site could assist in these efforts in reducing that down time with backups of data that has been lost at the main site. Replication can guarantee better RPO utilization to the system, rather its synchronous or asynchronous it can ensure the faster data transfer on the target site. Cloud computing could be used in recovery operations in order to recover the organization’s data that may have been lost or destroyed during a disaster. The cloud service could increase the effectiveness of the recovery process through access of files and folders that are needed to get the business back up and running with minimal downtime .

Data that is lost could be accessible from the cloud service including other applications needed depending on what was stored prior to the disaster. Cloud computing allows for disaster recovery efforts to be faster and more cost-effective because of the organizations original data being recovered and making recovery times shorter and costs down. Cloud services should be ideal for recovery efforts for any organization regardless of the size because of backups of critical data being readily available and the lower costs associated with utilizing cloud services. Cloud services allow for bigger or smaller organizations to almost fully recovery all data that was lost during a disaster within minutes of being copied.

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