Disaster recovery: does your management get it?
By David Almquist and Lane F. Cooper
BizTechReports.Com

Less than half of over 750 companies surveyed have disaster recovery and business continuity strategies in place, according to researchers at UK-based Chartered Management Institute. And even among those who do have a plan in place, 75 percent report that efforts are likely to be "haphazard" and "untested".

Experts have concluded that if a disaster recovery plan is not universally understood and practiced…then it is probably not terribly more than a fig leaf

The best disaster recovery plans are based on a multi-disciplinary framework of priorities. “You can’t just look at the technology in isolation,” says Patrick Corcoran, Global Client Solutions Executive at IBM. “You also need to understand how your plan supports the corporate strategy, organisation, processes, applications, data and infrastructure. If you don’t integrate these, you could have unexpected vulnerabilities.”

Good planning also looks at the extended enterprise -- including outside vendors and key partners. “One company in New Orleans outsourced its website to another local company,” said Corcoran. “They asked the vendor: do you have a business continuity plan? The answer was yes. That’s all the company asked. They never validated it, understood it or tested it. When they were knocked out of business by Katrina, they realised their website was also gone. Later the vendor explained, ‘Well, we don’t really have a plan. We have insurance.’”

Learn more about disaster recovery and business continuity