Best Practices

Although disasters are inevitable and mostly unpredictable, their commonality is that they will always vary in type and magnitude. This high level index of a typical continuity or recovery plan is here simply to show the major aspects of what it takes to think of virtually everything that could go wrong, and how to prevent it, or fix it. 

1 Executive Summary

2 Disaster Recovery Planning

2.1 Identification and Analysis of Disaster Risks/Threats

2.2 Classification of Risks Based on Relative Weights

2.2.1 External Risks

2.2.2 Facility Risks

2.2.3 Data Systems Risks

2.2.4 Departmental Risks

2.2.5 Desk-Level Risks

2.3 Building the Risk Assessment

2.4 Determining the Effects of Disasters

2.4.1 List of Disaster Affected Entities

2.4.2 Downtime Tolerance Limits

2.4.3 Cost of Downtime

2.4.4 Inter dependencies

2.5 Evaluation of Disaster Recovery Mechanisms

2.6 Disaster Recovery Committee

3 Disaster Recovery Phases

3.1 Activation Phase

3.1.1 Notification Procedures

3.1.2 Damage Assessment

3.1.3 Activation Planning

3.2 Execution Phase

3.2.1 Sequence of Recovery Activities

3.2.2 Recovery Procedures

3.3 Reconstitution Phase

4 The Disaster Recovery Plan Document

As you can see, continuity planning, prevention planning and recovery planning are very complex in their nature. The reality of this high level list is that it all comes down to logic. 

If you can identify the risk, you need to do something about it.

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