Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning
Project Snapshot –
Contingency and disaster recovery planning is a dynamic on-going activity. Carson develops comprehensive contingency and disaster recovery plans that address the specific procedures to be followed in the event of network or system failure. Our plans provide detailed procedures that enable effective restoration of information service in the shortest time possible.
Contingency planning permits an organization to continue essential functions if information technology support is interrupted. A contingency plan takes a broad perspective while providing a framework that will directly support an organization's goal of continued operations and address how to accomplish that goal. The goals of a contingency plan are to establish a communication scheme, establish recovery/response thresholds, and define the roles and responsibilities of key players.
A disaster recovery plan provides detailed step-by-step procedures for the recovery and operation of mission critical systems and services in the event of a catastrophic failure. The plan also includes detailed procedures for responding to emergencies and performing post-disaster recovery efforts. The disaster recovery plan may address the use of redundant facilities – either a hot site where all hardware and software are set up and ready to go at another location or a cold site where the hardware is in storage and the software must be loaded before reinitiating service.
Carson plans identify specific resources and threat scenarios and identify backup sites to be accessed in the event of various emergency scenarios. Our plans also identify key individuals responsible for implementing recovery actions; specify actions and sequences required to allow essential functions to continue; and identify procedures for restoring services to the original processing sites.
Carson's Contingency and Disaster Recovery plans document the strategy, in scenario format, to be followed when implementing backup and recovery actions. The format of a Carson contingency plan is that of an in-depth procedures manual for recovery team members to make decisions regardless of the disaster situation. The level of detail in the contingency plan is more than sufficient to guide system users, administrators and recovery team members from preliminary actions, through emergency response, to successful recovery of data and services.
Backup and Recovery– Because we understand that not all organizations have the benefit of an existing backup site, Carson's detailed backup strategies allow continued network services even after sustaining significant damage. These strategies reflect a plan to divide the facility between two or more locations to offer reasonable probability that enough functional capability will survive a major loss.
Although the wide variety and scope of actions involved in recovery operations are dictated by the individualistic nature and structure of a given network or system, Carson's strategy for recovery is linked closely with backup operations. Recovery actions follow backup operations in an effective schedule of restoring network capabilities and information assets for short-term and long-term functionality.
