Catching up....

I just realized I had not posted to this blog since......well, since I experiencced BCP first hand!  I lived through the Iowa Floods and experienced both wonderful and disasterous Business Continuity Plans.  I don't have a ton of time to go through the details -- but if you are interested in specifics, just let me know.  I did write about it on my other blog here, and then I had a Systems Management News article (here) about Disaster Recovery.

I wanted to point out a site that came across my radar recently that I really like. Their slogan sums it up nicely -- Business Continuity = People, Process and Technology.  Check out STL here.

Virtualization and Disaster Recovery

Just a quick link to a nice article on how Virtualization is/can be used as a DR tool. Check out the IT Business Edge article here.

DR Best Practices, and TSP

Just a quick link to a SearchCIO article on Disaster Recovery lessons learned and best practices. Besides being a good article, I learned a new term - Telecom Service Priority, which is

"an FCC program that directs telecommunications service providers (e.g., wireline and wireless phone companies) to give preferential treatment to users enrolled in the program when they need to add new lines or have their lines restored following a disruption of service, regardless of the cause."

Check out the article here

BCP and DR Basics

CSOonline.com has a pretty decent article about the basics of DR and Business Continuity. As I've mentioned, I've known about DR and BCP concepts, but still consider myself pretty green on the subject. The article has a paragraph about the difference between DR and BCP.

Given the human tendency to look on the bright side, many business executives are prone to ignoring "disaster recovery" because disaster seems an unlikely event. "Business continuity planning" suggests a more comprehensive approach to making sure you can keep making money. Often, the two terms are married under the acronym BC/DR. At any rate, DR and/or BC determines how a company will keep functioning after a disruptive event until its normal facilities are restored.

Check it out here

Disaster Management Conference

Just a quick link to a conference I learned about - the World Conference on Disaster Management. It will be held June 15-18, 2008 in Toronto, Canada.

Check out their website here

FFIEC BCP Booklet Update

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council has released an update to their 2003 booklet on Business Continuity Planning. The booklet "provides guidance to assist examiners in evaluating financial institution and service provider risk management processes to ensure the availability of critical financial services."

I have only skimmed over the 132 pages so far, but it seems to be a very nice publication. Since I had not read the 2003 version - it's all new to me. :)

Check it out here

CARVER Method

As I mentioned early off in this blog -- I 'think' I know BCP and DR concepts, but at a pretty intro/101 level. Well, tonight I learned about a (new to me) cool concept, and sure enough, it dates back to World War II. :)

I was reading a December post at SearchDataCenter.com about "avoiding DR pitfalls" and the author talked about the CARVER Matrix.

"CARVER is an old scheme dating back to World War II and stands for criticality, accessibility, recoverability, vulnerability, effect, recognizability. The idea is to list as many assets with descriptions as possible and rank them one to five in each point to help you determine the vulnerability of your data center as a system."

There is a white paper linked in there article that goes into the matrix deeper. Pretty cool method to apply and think about when writing DR and BCP documents and processes.