Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Flashcards
(40 cards)
Disruptions
unplanned event that interrupts any organizational asset like processes, functions, devices
3 Categories of disruptions
nondisasters
disasters
catastrophes
nondisasters
temporary due to malfunctions or failure. easiest to recover from
disaster
suddenly occurring, has long term negative impact.
catastrophe
much wider and longer impact than disaster. facilities are destroyed, requiring rebuilding and temporary offsite locations
Disaster
usually affects wide geographical area. severe damage, injury, death
severity is affected by amount of time organization takes to recover
officially over when all business elements return to normal function at original site
Technological disasters
device failures. usually unintentional, even if caused by errors in configuration
if a disaster occurs because of deliberate attack, it’s considered man-made even if it’s against a technology
Man Made disaster
occurs through human intent or error. Attacks, personnel unavailability due to evacuation
Typically intentional
Natual
floods, tsunami, tornados, etc. Fires except for arson
Natural
floods, tsunami, tornados, etc. Fires except for arson
Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
Each organizational function will have a DRP. It includes steps to restore functions and systems. Goal is to minimize damage and injury
The DRP’s are part of the BCP
DRP’s are implemented when emergency occurs
Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
Each organizational function will have a DRP. It includes steps to restore/recover functions and systems. Goal is to minimize damage and injury
DRP’s are implemented when emergency occurs
The DRP’s are part of the BCP
Business continuity Plan (BCP)
considers all aspects affected by a disaster: functions, systems, personnel, facilities.
Lists and prioritizes services needed, particularly IT, telecom
Business continuity Plan (BCP)
Availability
Reliability
Recoverability
considers all aspects affected by a disaster: functions, systems, personnel, facilities.
Lists and prioritizes services needed, particularly IT, telecom
Availability is a main component. Orgs must determine acceptable levels of availability for functions and systems
Reliability is the capability of a function or systems to consistently perform to its specifications
Recoverability is the capability of a function to be recovered after a disruption
Contingency Plan
Instructions on what personnel should do until functions and systems are restored to full functionality
includes contact information for personnel, vendors and system and equipment requirements
failure of the contingency plan considered a mgmt failure
How often should the BCP, DRP and contingency plans be reviewed?
annually. maintain version control
Fault Tolerance
when a backup component starts working when primary fails.
Business Impact Analysis
4 main steps
ID critical processes, resources
ID outage impacts, estimate downtime
ID resource requirements
ID recovery priorities
Business Impact Analysis
ID Critical processes and resources
first ID the business units or functional areas
select people to gather necessary data, select how to gather data
use questionnaires, interviews, surveys, vulnerability analysis, risk assessment
document business processes, functions and the resources they depend on
Business Impact Analysis
Determine criticality level of resources by using these terms
Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) aka Maximum Period Time of Disruption (MPTD)
Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
reliability increased by higher MTBF, lower MTTR
MTD/MPTD - maximum time an organization can tolerate a single resource being down
MTTR - Average time needed to repair a resource when a disaster happens
MTBF - Estimated time a device will operate before failure occurs. Calculated by device vendor
Business Impact Analysis
Terms to ID outage impacts and estimate downtime
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Work Recovery Time (WRT)
RTO - shortest time period after a disruption that a resource must be restored to avoid unacceptable consequences. RTO should be smaller than MTD
RPO - Point in time to which the disrupted resource must be returned
WRT - difference between the RTO and MTD. The time left over after the RTO, before reaching MTD
Business Impact Analysis
Organizations must develop their own documented criticality levels:
critical resources
urgent resources
important resources
normal resources
critical - vital to operation, restored within minutes or hours
urgent - restored in 24 hours
important - restored in 72 hours
normal - resorted in 7 days
Recovery Strategies
Alternate locations include:
hot site
cold side
hot - contains all resources needed for full operation. Only resource needed to restore at hot site is data. Quickest recovery, but expensive, hard to manage.
cold - contains electrical, HVAC, communications wiring, plumbing. Longer to restore than hot or warm site. cheapest, but hard to test
Warm Site
Tertiary Site
Warm Site
typically has everything except computers
Most widely implemented alternate location
Tertiary Site
secondary backup site in case hot, warm or cold site is unavailable
usually used to protect against large catastrophes affecting wide geographic areas
Reciprocal agreements
Redundant sites
Reciprocal agreements
two organizations agree to act as alternate locations for each other. Can’t be legally enforced. May not handle workload of both organizations simultaneously
Redundant sites
not leased site, but owned by same organization as primary site.
most expensive but fastest way to recover
Disaster Recovery Plan Should include these things for hardware
vendor contact information in case new supplies need to be bought
recovery information for: hardware backup (computers, network gear, etc. guidelines and procedures for restoring data
Disaster Recovery Plan Should include these things for software
software backups including applications and data, should be stored at an alternate location.
All license information should be documented
software installation media, service packs, updates
frequent backups of applications should be taken
software escrow in case the software vendor goes out of business