Data recovery processes should reflect an organization's information system priorities. As big data plays a mission-critical role in an organization, disaster recovery becomes more of a focal point. Data recovery activities should take place in a pre-planned sequential fashion so that system components can be restored in a logical manner and should take into consideration:
- Personnel: The IS leadership and workforce members, as well as the SIRT members, involved in data recovery processes will be the most valuable resource. These individuals may be asked to work at great personal sacrifice and resources shall be provided to meet their personal and professional needs.
- Communication: Notification of internal and external business partners associated with the organization's information systems.
- Salvage of Existing IS Equipment and Systems: Initial data recovery efforts shall be targeted at protecting and preserving the current media, equipment, applications and systems. A priority shall be to identify and obtain storage media. The IS equipment shall be further protected from the elements or removed to a safe location, away from the disaster site if necessary (Alternative Sites).
- Designate Recovery Site: It will be necessary to determine if the data recovery efforts can be carried out at the original primary site or moved to another location (see Command Recovery Center Alternative Site section). The choice of using an internal or a remote site will be dependent on the damage and estimated recovery of the computing and networking capabilities.
- Backup/New Equipment: The recovery process will rely heavily on the ability of the organization's vendors to quickly provide replacements for the resources which cannot be salvaged. Emergency procurement processes will be implemented to allow the IS leadership to quickly replace equipment, supplies, software and any others items required for data recovery.
- Reassembly Process: Salvaged and new data recovery equipment and components shall be reassembled at the recovery site to begin data recovery processes.
- Restoration of Data from Backups: Data recovery will rely on the availability of the backup data from the storage site. Initial data recovery efforts will focus on restoring the operating systems by pre-determined priority.
- Restoration of Applications Data: IS leadership will work with the individual departments/application owners to restore each running application. As a period of time may have elapsed between the time that the backups were made and the time of the disaster requiring data recovery, the application owners must address mechanisms to capture and restore the lost interim data.
- Move Back to Restored Permanent/Primary Site: If the data recovery process has taken place at an alternative site, the equipment and systems that have been assembled at the alternative site will need to be returned to the original site when available.
Directions: Prepare a document that specifies the critical mission data that will need to be included in your Disaster Recovery Plan. This document will become part of the larger developed plan that you will create throughout the term. You may need to perform a web-based search for a Disaster Recovery Plan template using a search engine like Google or Bing to help you determine what the plan will look like in its final form.
In your document, make sure to:
- Specify the different types of mission critical data that need to be procured. This may include information from sections A-I above depending on the organization you've chosen.
- Explain why these types of data are important for your organization.
