[no subject]

[Debbie Stewart <Debbie_Stewart -at- SIECOR -dot- COM>]

Hello Mary and fellow techwhirlers,

All the responses that have been posted have been very good posting! A
      business continuity plan is Prevention, Response, Resumption,
      Recovery, Restoration. Remeber your *three-Rs*? Now you have five!

You need to determine what your business critical functions are, determine
      the level of disaster and determine the appropriate recovery
      procedures. For a corporate wide plan, you can not "what if. . . "
      your plan to death. You can have general company procedures to follow
      - remember the fire drills at school, remember the tornado drills?
      Disaster recovery is more about making sure you have the data in
      order to resume business. Having reliable data storage and backup
      procedures is essential to maintain data integrity. Information asset
      protection!!!

 From there, each department should have disaster  recovery procedures -
      the mail room will have procedures for when UPS  or the post office
      is on strike; the data center should have contingency/recovery plans.
      There should be contracts for either hot or cold sites, plans for
      data recovery, personnel contact lists with backup personnel listed;
      hardware vendor contracts for replacing equipment; forms vendors
      holding emergency forms supplies, etc, etc, and the list is long.

For starters you need to make sure management is willing to provide you
      with the time, tools, and money to develop the plan. You need to
      develop the plan at the corporate level, involving civil emergency
      services; the departmental level, then personnel level. You need to
      develop the plan, but most importantly, you need to *test* your plan.
      This is most often overlooked, unbudgeted for, or simply not given
      the importance, but it is *vital* to you plan.

I am responsible for developing the drp for our information services
      department, then going to our outlying plants, and help IS
      departments develop their plans. Corporate plans are in the works
      that involve the whole corporation - which plant location would help
      which plant in a disaster, where do personnel go if there is a
      tornado, how should personnel respond to bomb threats, etc. It makes
      it mandatory for each business unit within the corporate family to
      have plans and to test those plans. During the re-development of our
      plan, we found out that we had a 24 hour window where data was
      unrecoverable. This is not acceptable! We have reduced our window and
      continue to where we hope to close that window, and at a reasonable
      cost.

Here are some good sites for resources:

      http://www.drj.com/     Disaster Recovery Journal - they have a great
      article for new planners and great resources.

      http://www.rothstein.com     Rothestein Disaster Recovery - has a
      catalog of books all on D/R

      htt://www.colorado.edu/hazards     Natural Hazards Center

      http://www.binomial.com/     Binomial  -  a planning software - also
      offers seminars on D/R and business                         planning

      http://www.survive.com       Survive! is a business continuity group
      with tons of resources

      http://www.fema.gov          Federal Emergency Management Agency

      http://www.disaster-resource.com   Yep, disaster recovery resources

Check these sites out and you will find dozens more. There are hundreds of
      companies that offer business continuity planning or planning
      software. Search the internet for business continuity,  contingency
      planning, disaster recovery, recovery services, data  recovery,
      business resumption planning, electonic vaulting. You will be
      overwhelmed by the amount of information available to you. Call if
      you have any questions. Good luck!


Debbie Stewart
Lone Tech Writer
Siecor Operations, LLC
Hickory NC
704-327-5143
debbie -dot- stewart -at- siecor -dot- com

Opinions expressed are mine alone; who else would express these opinions?

Mary Kunzweiler wrote:

 <snip>   I need to document a corporate-wide disaster recovery plan.
 Does anybody know the types of info covered in such a plan?  I know I need
 to
 cover topics like "Tornado wipes out manufacturing plants, here's our
 plan",
 "Bubonic plague keeps 3/4 work force at home, here's our plan" and "UPS
 goes on
 strike, here's our plan." Do I lump disasters under major categories, such
 as
 "Natural disaster recovery" "Personnel disaster recovery" "Vendor disaster
 recovery" etc.? What categories am I missing?
 Does anybody have templates or example plans they'd be willing to share
 (in
 MSWord)?
 Do URLs to web sites that discuss disaster recovery plans exist? If so,
 what
 are these URLs?
 Thanks,
 Mary <snip>