COURSE CODE: IT311 – Information Assurance and

Security
Module 1

Week 4: September 7 -13, 2020 | 1st Semester, S.Y. 2020-2021

Introduction
Disaster Recovery Plan is designed to ensure the continuation of vital
business processes in the event that a disaster occurs. The plan provides an
effective solution that can be used to recover all vital business processes
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within the required time frame using vital records that are stored offsite.
The Plan is just one of several plans that will provide procedures to handle
emergency situations. These plans can be utilized individually but are
designed to support one another. The first plan is the Crisis Management
Plan. The plan allows the ability to handle high-level coordination activities
surrounding any crisis situation. This unit will also discuss the development,
maintenance and testing of the Disaster Recovery Plan. Lastly, it will discuss
the culture and employee education on Disaster Recovery. The term
“disaster” is relative because disasters can occur can occur in varying
degrees. So, this Plan has considered this issue and incorporates
management procedures as well as technical procedures to insure
provable recovery capability.

The final issue to be addressed within the Disaster Recovery Strategy is to

insure that every reasonable measure has been taken to identify and
mitigate potential risks that exist within the processing environment. The most
successful Disaster Recovery Strategy is one that will never be implemented;
therefore, risk avoidance is a critical element in the disaster recovery
process.

A Disaster Recovery Management System can be defined as the on-going

process of planning, developing, testing and implementing Disaster
Recovery management procedures and processes to ensure the efficient
and effective resumption of vital business functions in the event of an
unscheduled interruption. With the growing dependence on I/S and the
Business Process to support business growth and changes associated with
their complexities, compounded with the complexities of changing
technology, the following elements are key to implementing a
comprehensive Disaster Recovery Program:
 Critical Application Assessment
 Back-Up Procedures
 Recovery Procedures
 Implementation Procedures
 Test Procedures
 Plan Maintenance

Intended Learning Outcomes

 Prepare a threat analysis
 Describe a disaster recovery scenario

Topic
 Disaster
Any event that can cause a significant disruption in operational and/or
computer processing capabilities for a period of time, which affects the
operations of the business.

An outage (crisis/discontinuity) may exist when:

 A service providing support to a critical business function fails.
 It is determined the service cannot be restored before the point it
becomes vital to the business.

Types of disasters
1. Natural or environment disasters
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A natural or environmental disaster could be anything from a fire, flood,

earthquake, hurricane, lightning storm or an air crash. The location of the
business premises and the local environment needs to be assessed to
determine the exact external threats that the company faces.
2. Technical or mechanical disasters
Technical Disasters includes the computers problems, instrumental failures,
industrial disasters, equipments problems, etc. Examples of technical
threats include viruses, worms, power outages, backup failure, system
failure and hacker attacks such as denial of service attacks. These include
accidental and intentional activities. Malicious attacks may originate from
hackers, paid professionals, disgruntled employees or organized crime
gangs.
3. Human activities or threads
 Unintentional threats may come from employees who accidentally
delete or update information.
 Over dependence on one key person is also a threat to the system.

Recovery Strategy

The recovery strategy in this part of the Disaster Recovery Plan will be to
relocate critical Information Systems processing to an alternate computer-
processing center. The processes will be recovered at the Disaster Recovery
Services provider name and location of the Hot-Site. The Disaster Recovery
Services provider name is responsible for ensuring that the system
configurations and the associated network requirements are accurate and
technically feasible at all times. Therefore, yearly testing will be a part of the
alternate processing strategy. Also, the associated network connectivity will
be recovered, within the disaster recovery scenario, using the alternate
processing strategy.

Recovery Phases
The ideal disaster recovery process recognizes the possibilities of the
situation, and manages the necessary activities so that they are solutions,
not additional problems.

Phases of the disaster

The Disaster has four main phases. They are as follows,

 Prevention
 Preparedness
 Response
 Recovery
 Phase 1: Prevention
Move operations to the Disaster Recovery Backup Site and the Emergency
Operations Center. This activity begins with activation of the Disaster
Recovery Plan. There is a period of up to 24 hours allowed for organization
and the turnover of the disaster recovery backup site. Observe the
following during prevention phase:

 Identify and minimize the risks posed by the building, its equipment
and fittings, and the natural hazards of the area.
 Carry out a building inspection and alter factors which constitute a
potential hazard.
 Establish routine housekeeping and maintenance measures to
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withstand disaster in buildings and surrounding areas.

 Install automatic fire detection and extinguishing systems, and water-
sensing alarms.
 Take special precautions during unusual periods of increased risk,
such as building renovation.
 Make special arrangements to ensure the safety of library or archival
material when exhibited.
 Provide security copies of vital records such as collection inventories,
and store these offsite.
 Protect computers and data through provision of uninterrupted
power supply.
 Have comprehensive insurance for the library or archives, its
contents, the cost of salvage operations, and potential replacement,
re-binding and restoration of damaged materials.
Phase 2: Preparedness

To recover critical business functions, restoration of the critical applications

and critical network connectivity. The goal here is to recover the systems
and network so that customers can continue business. Observe the
following during preparedness phase:
 Develop a written preparedness, response and recovery plan.
 Keep the plan up-to-date, and test it.
 Keep together supplies and equipment required in a disaster and
maintain them.
 Establish and train an in-house disaster response team. Training in :
 Disaster response techniques
 Identification and marking on floor-plans and enclosures of
irreplaceable and important material for priority salvage.
 Prepare and keep an up-to-date set of documentation
 Distribute the plan and documentation to appropriate locations on-
and off-site.
 Institute procedures to notify appropriate people of the disaster and
assemble them rapidly.
Phase 3: Responses

Return data processing activities to the primary facilities or another

computer facility. The Plan provides recovery procedures to be used at the
present data center site after repairs have been made or at the Disaster
Recovery Backup Site and the Emergency Operations Center. It also
provides recovery procedures for the restoration of critical applications
using either data recovered from the damaged data center or from the
backup data stored off-site.

The following should be observed during response phase:

  Follow established emergency procedures for raising the alarm,
evacuating personnel and making the disaster site safe
 Contact the leader of the disaster response team to direct and brief
the trained salvage personnel
 When permission is given to re-enter the site, make a preliminary
assessment of the extent of the damage, and the equipment,
supplies and services required.
 Stabilize the environment to prevent the growth of mould.
 Photograph damaged materials for insurance claim purposes.
 Set up an area for recording and packing material which requires
freezing, and an area for air- drying slightly wet material and other
minor treatment.
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 Transport water-damaged items to the nearest available freezing

facility.
Phase 4: Recovery

It provides recovery procedures for the restoration of critical applications

using either data recovered from the damaged data center or from the
backup data stored off-site. The following
conditions, if met, will constitute a successful recovery effort:
 Restore critical applications to the most current date available on
backup tapes stored off-site.
 Updating the systems and databases will take place as the recovery
effort progresses.
It is understood that, due to the emergency or disaster, response times will
probably be slower than normal production situations.

The following should be observed during recovery phase:

 Establish a programme to restore both the disaster site and the
damaged materials to a stable and usable condition.
 Determine priorities for restoration work and seek the advice of a
conservator as to the best methods and options, and obtain cost
estimates.
 Develop a phased conservation programme where large quantities
of material are involved.
 Discard items not worth retaining, and replace or rebind items not
justifying special conservation treatment.
 Contact insurers.
 Clean and rehabilitate the disaster site.
 Replace treated material in the refurbished site.
 Analyze the disaster and improve the plan in the light of experience.
 Reference
 Makwae. 2018. An assessment of disaster recovery planning: A
strategy for data security
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