Disaster Recovery

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nIntroduction

nThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council have demonstrated the importance of carrying out the evaluations of possibilities of hazards taking place. Various frameworks have established methodological rules that can be used to evaluate the possibility of a hazard occurrence within an institution across the whole word (Blokdijk, 2008, p.23). Risk refers to the presence of a chance that an undesirable outcome will take place, and this outcome can have adverse consequences to an institution or a companys fulfillment of its core aims.

nIn any institution, several kinds of undesirable chances exists such as those that can harm Information Technology, those touching on finance, operations within the institution as well as those concerning the individuals safety. In order to control threats posed by these unwanted events that may disrupt the normal running of an operation, institutions needs to develop and utilize management approaches that pin points, evaluate and take measures to prevent the possibility of events or circumstances (Blokdijk, 2008, p.34). The sole aim of appropriate assessment of a potential threat is to make sure that each threat is noted, preserved, given priority and appropriate action taken as much as possible.

nThe Al-Qaeda terrorist attack on U.S.A on September 11, 2001 resulted to the U.S. government and several non-governmental organizations dwell on interventions that are in line with preventing acts of terror, safety of the state and intelligence. The terror act led to critical understanding of evaluating threats or dangers in the general sectors as well as private ones (Blokdijk, 2008, p.54). The physical safety of people and a change in the ability of technology have undergone a positive transformation and therefore enabled business activities to continue in the case of an undesirable event and after its occurrence.

nOrganizations have been compelled to identify working settings that are not rigid in order to enable its workforce to perform duties in a particular area in an event of a disaster (Phillips 2009). Various companies like Federal Signal have undergone great steps in utilizing call tree functions which are automatic. Other services such as those of municipal have too increased their abilities to assist enterprises and workforces perform duties in any event of an undesirable outcome (GB, 2014, p.12). Additionally, the body concerned with service for the public as well as teams responsible for recovery after an undesirable event have increased the utilization of social media like Twitter and Facebook so that their personnel become aware of any event and also pass and acquire information with major stakeholders.

n Most institutions have even gone to an extend of developing an office for a person who will be in charge of social media whose main duty will be to take charge of communications done online as well as ensuring that the online site of the institution become updated (Phillips, 2009, p.27). Furthermore, some organizations have put into consideration possessing flashlights, water and food for their human resource living in offices and possessing certain special areas within the places where activities are run in order to ensure that they can put back crucial systems as fast as possible.

nCompanies need to put into consideration having geographic locations that are far from each when trying to make activities for back up (Phillips, 2009, p.46). This is so as to increase the possibilities of protecting its prime data center. For instance, Merrill Lynch had its prime data center lost for some time since its main office was just adjacent to ground zero. Other institutions such as Cantor Fitzgerald LP lost many employees in addition to its prime data center. Prior to the attack, many companies except a few which reproduce outside state, reproduced data within a central place or from an area close to a prime data center. This was because they hardly put into consideration physical distances (Wallace & Webber, 2004, p.67).

nHowever, recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) have made companies strong during the process of recovering after the occurrence of an adverse event because of the recovery systems instilled in them. In a case where a server or data center experience breakdown, a different one can arise within the shortest time possible. Utilization of both the public and individual cloud services has enabled a strong system for protection (Wallace & Webber, 2004, p.74). This is where many crucial enterprises information is reproduced to the providers of service or kept in a cloud belonging to an organization which can be accessed from any other place. They make the activities of recovering information effective such as cloud service which gives chances of recovery at a low price that can be afforded.

nHowever, such institutions ought to only keep information that is required to make enterprise activities running again since if many data are kept, more funds will be required to retrieve (Wallace & Webber, 2004, p.81). They also need to ensure that the offsite power grid is not the same so that of the organization. Having a different power grid ensures that the offsite center is not interrupted in a situation when that of the institution breaks. Moreover, the effectiveness of recovery process could be lowered by cloud services as they become highly hyped more so in operations of finance industry, but despite this, cloud services forms a good alternative for institutions to recover after an undesired event.

nReferences

nBlokdijk, G. (2008). Disaster recovery 100 success secrets. [S.l.: Emereo.

nGB, A. (2014). Disaster recovery using VMware vSphere replication and vCenter site recovery manager. Birmingham, U.K.: Packt Pub.

nPhillips, B. (2009). Disaster recovery. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

nWallace, M., & Webber, L. (2004). The disaster recovery handbook. New York: American Management Association