In this modern world of technologies business and all the economical organizations moving very fast towards the internet. As it is one of the most important thing now for everyone in this world. Internet services are fast, easy to use and convenient. But it is one side of the coin . As it's vastly going industry bad actors eyes are now on this as expected. So security of this services are very important without any interruption is necessary now. A business infrastructure really need to act quick if it falls under any circumstance of being attacked by the cyber criminals because time is money . If they are not aware of this situations and how to handle this they might end up giving huge amount of subsidy. That's why BCP and DRP like frameworks are invented to keep business or economical infrastructure safe.
Business continuity plan
Business continuity plan means how to continue business when company is facing a disaster or any issue that will harm the process of a business which could cost a huge amount of money, time and resources. It also helps an organization to maintain elasticity and quick response to an interruption and company reputation. So, there are some strategies which should be taken when making a business continuity plan. Some of this are…..
1)Establish a committee for planning : First of all a committee should be created with the important role holders of the business infrastructure where they manage everything of the organization.
2)Conduct a Business Impact Analysis(BIA) : This is one of the most important process of planning a BCP because through business impact analysis we can get the over view of the assets of the business and which things are how much impactful. We can quantify,qualify of a interruption or disruption and loss of an organization. BIA finds out the major and critical assets and how much time is considerable for recovery and how much data loss should be allowed.
3)Mitigate Risk: After finding out the risks with BIA mitigating that would be the first job to do. Threats that are detected with the companies human resource, assets, environment to an acceptable level because nothing can be secured by 100%. some of them might be backing up important data to the cloud may be multiple cloud , splitting resources in different places , storing advanced recovery tools and testing them frequently after some time etc.
4)Establish Business continuity strategies: It simply means how to make the services uninterrupted and available to the customers as soon as some disruption happens. Mitigating risk was one of the task of business continuation planning. There are also some other dependency requirement which should be fulfilled.
5)Develop the Plan: Develop the plan for disaster and emergencies . Which steps should be immediately taken if the organization falls under this situations. At a minimum a plan should include policy purpose and scope, objectives, key roles and responsibilities, Alternate plannings, BIA result based actions etc.
6)Test the plan : Testing the plan includes several things like practice of role playing in emergencies,testing the devices and services,rehearsing the plan made for BCP.
Disaster Recovery Plan(DRP)
Disaster Recovery Plan is one of the aspects of Business Continuity Plan(BCP). And probably this is one of the most important aspects of all for maintaining a business continuation. If the information loss is not recoverable than the organizations would face huge amount of compensation and other damages. Disaster recovery plan simply means a plan or process thorough which an organization will response to a disaster to protect the IT infrastructure and more importantly how they will recover that. So there are some strategies that will lead to a good DRP.
Understanding IT infrastructure and outline any risk : It is important to consider assets , equipments and data which should be recovered in a disaster.
Conduct a Business Impact Analysis(BIA): This is one of the most important process of planning DRP because through business impact analysis we can get the over view of the assets of the business and which things are how much impactful. We can quantify,qualify of a interruption or disruption and loss of an organization. BIA finds out the major and critical assets and how much time is considerable for recovery and how much data loss should be allowed.
Creating a DR plan based on RPO and RTO : Recovery point objective(RPO) means setting a goal for the maximum amount of data loss can tolerate an organization and Recovery time objective(RTO) means setting a goal for the maximum time it should take to restore normal operation following data loss. Measuring RPO and RTO is crucial otherwise even after taking a plan it would be less effective.
Approach the right cloud partner : Cloud is very helpful to the recovery process as most of the time it back-ups the data of the organization. So when choosing a cloud partner some requirement should be checked as reliability, speed of recovery, usability, simplicity in setup and recovery and security. If this are maintained in a cloud it should be trusted . This also helps a company response quickly after a disaster.
Build Own Disaster Recovery Infrastructure: An organization might keep back-up for their data or recovery but it is best practice to build own DR infrastructure. Through this it would be much easier and faster to response to a disaster. While building the DR infrastructure this steps should be keep in mind :-
*Quantity of the components would be required
*Cloud management
*User authentication and access management
*Best practice to security and compliance
*Strategies to minimizing likelihood of disaster
Putting Disaster Recovery plan on Paper: When a disaster occurs, each individual should be ready to take charge of the responsibility as per his role in the DR process.
Testing the DR plan often: Testing the plan often will ensure there are no loopholes in the plan. That's how you can basically save your organization from big losses and keep customers trust of your business alive . Because Companies reputation is an asset. Remember you would be mostly safe but not 100%. There is no one hundred percent grantee of safety of any device in this world! Stay Secure.......
