Disaster recovery is a crucial component of business continuity. Untested disaster recovery plans are a waste of paper they’re printed on. Ninety-four percent of all disaster recover plans are untested. Another four percent are partially tested. Two percent are tested. Less than 1/2 of one percent of disaster revovery plan have chance of working. Most disaster recovery plans are written without a full risk assessment being performed. A risk assessment, like disaster recovery, is not just about IT. It is about your business, every aspect of it. What’s your business worth?
When I worked in Disaster Recovery for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of the National Capital Area, we tested every six months. The backup tapes were kept in a cave in Pennsylvania, and we worked for 3 days straight in a control center in Fairfax, VA. Ate, slept and worked there until we were able to bring the entire system up and running.
I was observing a full mainframe DR for a large Chicago bank and the first problem was that the remote back-up storage contractor lost tapes 1, 2, and 3. That's pretty much the part of the recovery that tells the computer that it's a computer. The solution? Call the data center and have them cut tapes 1, 2 and 3 and send them to the recovery site.
Sometimes the audit reports just write themselves.