Disaster Recovery Team, Research Paper Example

A Disaster Situation

The following recovery actions are to be used as a guide.  During a real disaster circumstances may dictate that some or all of the steps documented may have to be altered.  The Departmental Coordinators should use his/her judgment while managing the recovery operation.

Call tree / Notification criteria

On receiving of BCP invocation call from Business continuity coordinator, the departmental coordinator should note following information Guster, D., McCann, B., Krzenski, K., & Lee, O. F. (2008):

• Exact location of work area in disaster situation and time to reach at work area.
• When servers will be operational and how current the master files will be (if applicable).
• Departmental coordinator should call all recovery participant of respective department and inform information received from BCC.
• Departmental coordinator will record information when called recipient participant and also records their arrival time at alternate site.

Form A: Disaster Notification Record (Refer to Appendix 1.1)

Form B: Team Recovery Call notification and arrival log sheet (Refer to Appendix 1.2)

Departmental Meeting

Key department personnel should meet to determine specific actions plan to be taken and establish the priority of restoring business functions based on the work area and resources available.  The department leader should explain the goals and objectives identified by the Business continuity coordinator

• Departmental coordinator review tasks to be performed and assign recovery participant.
• Manual workaround procedure should be continued until the system are unavailable
• Distribute copies of the news media statement that has been prepared in emergency meeting.  Copies can be obtained from the incident Management Group.  Instruct everyone not to makes statements to the news media.
• Personnel should be assigned to provide recovery support needed by other teams, as needed.
• Implement procedures to resume time dependent functions based on the priority established.
• Departmental coordinator should give information to BCC as early as activities of department completed.

Recovery Location

• Primary Location: XYZ Inc.
• Secondary location: If any identified in Emergency meeting

Priority of Critical Processes Template (Refer to Appendix 2.1)

External / vendor contact information (Refer to Appendix 2.2)

Management Notification Checklist (Refer to Appendix 3.1)

Recovery Team Notification Checklist (Refer to Appendix 3.2)

For IT Disaster Recovery Call Tree (Refer to Appendix 4.1)

Damage Assessment Procedures

Once access to the facility is permitted, an assessment of the damage is made to determine the estimated length of the outage. If access to the facility is precluded, then the estimate includes the time until the effect of the disaster on the facility can be evaluated.

The DRP will be implemented following an emergency event based on the damage assessment performed by the DAT. It is imperative that the nature of the emergency and the extent of the damage be assessed as quickly as conditions allow. The DAT will address the following concerns Omar, A., Alijani, D., & Mason, R. (2011):

• Determine the cause of the emergency;
• Determine the area(s) affected;
• Determine stability of the area;
• Determine the status of the physical infrastructure;
• Determine inventory and functional status of equipment;
• Determine type of damage to equipment (e.g., water, fire and heat);
• Determine items to be replaced;
• Estimate recovery time; and
• Report findings to the BCP Coordinator.

Alternate Assessment Procedures

The damage assessment team includes persons from administration and information technology department

Damage Assessment Team Leader (DAT)

Upon notification from the DR Coordinator, the DAT Leader is to closely work with management of the building to assess damages and identify following reasons.

• Determine the cause of the emergency;
• Determine the area(s) affected;
• Estimate recovery time; and
• Report findings to the BCP Coordinator

Plan Activation

The DRP will only be instituted when one or more of the following activation criteria have been met Kadlec, C., & Shropshire, J. (2010):

• Safety of personnel is at stake;
• Severe damage to the facility precludes further operation;
• IT systems will be unavailable for more than 24 hours or
• Extent of damage to systems precludes continued operations.

DR Coordinator

Once the damage has been assessed, the DR Coordinator will select the appropriate strategy and begin the recovery process:

• If the plan is activated, the DR Coordinator will notify all Team Leaders, and provide details of the event, and state whether relocation is required.
• Upon notification from the DR Coordinator, Team Leaders will notify their respective teams. Team members are to be informed of all applicable information and prepared to respond and relocate if necessary.
• The DR Coordinator will notify the off-site storage facility that a contingency event has been declared and to ship the necessary materials (as determined by damage assessment) to the Alternate Site.
• The DR Coordinator will notify the management of ABC Inc. that a contingency event has been declared and to prepare the facility for the Organization’s arrival.
• The DR Coordinator will notify remaining personnel on the general status of the incident.

References

Guster, D., McCann, B., Krzenski, K., & Lee, O. F. (2008). A cost effective, safe, and simple method to provide a disaster recovery plan to small and medium sized businesses. Review of Business Research, 8(4), 63-71.

Kadlec, C., & Shropshire, J. (2010). Best practices in IT disaster recovery planning among US banks. Journal of Internet Banking & Commerce, 15(1), 1-11.

Omar, A., Alijani, D., & Mason, R. (2011). Information technology disaster recovery plan: Case study. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 10(2), 127-141.