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Disasters range from the every day errors resulting in file damage
through to a century's only flooding or earthquake. Statistically
it is easily established that almost all disasters that result in
data-loss also result in considerable short term income loss, and
that 20% of companies reporting large losses of this kind fail within
5 years of the disaster. Yet, for too many companies and government
organizations, adequate, updated disaster recovery planning is a
neglected area of information security. It also has the largest
return on investment for many organizations. ESTec experts provide
assistance in developing appropriate disaster recovery plans and
a suitable testing program. A regular review of the recovery plans
is necessary to ensure that the plans are up to date, and have been
tested with the latest company configurations.
Sample Case
Customer: A Large Natural Gas Distributor
Services: Disaster Recovery Plan Audit for Y2K
Problem: With Y2K less than 6 months away, management wanted to
assess preparedness, plans for recovery in event of a disaster associated
with the year 2000, and estimate cost-benefit figures for each affected
area of enterprise. In effect, the distribution system wanted to
ensure that disaster recovery plans were in place for all critical
systems.
Solution: An ESTec consultant identified the critical systems and
located the disaster recovery plan for each one. The plans were
then checked and spot checks were performed to ensure that the required
resources were still available, and that the recovery plans worked.
A key accounting system had recently faced a large increase in hardware
demand after a new application was introduced. During that time
they had installed all of the cold backup equipment that was supposed
to be on stand-by for disaster recovery. The project manager had
attempted to hide his cost overruns by pillaging the disaster recovery
plan. The result was that the disaster recovery plan no longer had
sufficient available resources. Worse: the resources it required
were much larger than the recovery plan estimated. Senior management
insisted that the equipment he "borrowed" was replaced,
and that additional equipment was sourced to meet the increased
needs of the plan.
Result: ESTec Identified shortcomings in the disaster recovery plans,
allowing the client to fix the problems before a disaster occurred.
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