Free Essay on Organization's Disaster Recovery Plan

Summary of disaster

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The catastrophic earthquake was of a high magnitude that measured 7.8 on the Richter scale. The disaster claimed the life of one LPHG staff and damaged infrastructure, building, and 50,000 lives were lost. It also resulted in the outbreak of H1Z1 virus.

DRP Documents:

The following is a list of records that were present before the catastrophe:

1. The organization had a disaster recovery plan in place which helped to guide the staff on how to perform their roles in the recovery process.

2. Due to the fact the Disaster Recovery Plan was incomplete; it hindered the recovery efforts as the team was confused on how to proceed.

3. A Business Impact Analysis document was never completed and hence it proved to be a challenge for the team to measure the impact of the disaster.

4. The backup recovery plan in place proved to be solid as the team was able to protect and restore critical business data without an issue successfully.

Post-Disaster Response Summary

As a response to the disaster the organization and the recovery team took following steps:

1. Provide assistance to injured staff, and document all injuries that had occurred as a result of the disaster situation.

2. The alternate sites were contacted to ensure business continuity.

3. The team faced many obstacles in the restoration of the business processes due to incomplete DPP and BIA.

4. The lack of other backups made the task of retrieving employee's contact information difficult.

5. The team proceeded with their data restoration efforts, and the data was restored and secured.

Policies: The "Backup and Recovery Policy" was instrumental in safeguarding against the loss of data which may have occurred.

Documents: The Backup and Recovery Policy document was utilized to identify data that had been backed up or lost.

Positive consequences: A positive outcome due to the fact the organization had a BRP was the backups were being performed as per the defined schedule. By having a BRP, the organization was able to restore their data and ensure business continuity successfully.

Ways to improve: The team in charge of the DRP should review all documents to make sure all relevant information is being backed up. This will be of great help since new data which needs to be preserved might have been developed.

Strength #2:

Strength Details:

Summary of Strength: Structured Chain of Command Structure: One of the greatest strengths present in the scenario was the presence of a defined command structure inside the communication policy. This assisted the team in contacting all the necessary emergency services for medical assistance, as well as alerting the alternate worksite to start the process of resuming business operations.

Contributing factors:

Plans: The Disaster Recovery Plan helped to identify the entities needed to be contacted in the event of a disaster situation.

Policies Command Structure and Communication policy defined the principles, responsibilities, and authorities in responding to emergencies.

Documents The DRP was a hierarchical list of contacts that was helpful in determining the roles the staff needed to play.

Positive consequences The implemented communication policy enabled the team to make effective communication. This assisted the team to perform a swift assessment and evaluation of the damage.

Strength #3:

Strength Details:

Summary of Strength: DRP Awareness: The teams performance after the disaster demonstrates that there was awareness about the DRP in the organization.

Contributing factors:

Plans: Having the Disaster Recovery Plan indicated that the organization understood the importance and efforts were undertaken to make stakeholders aware.

Policies: The resulting Backup and Recovery Policy helped to inspire awareness through the IT department.

Documents: Backup and Recovery Policy, Business Impact Analysis, and Disaster Recovery plan supported the outreach program to increase awareness among the employees about their roles.

Positive consequences: The success of the DRP awareness was demonstrated in the fact that team was able to locate the DRP documents. Once the documents were found, the team understood how to proceed as it was indicated in the DRP and this proved to be instrumental in the organization of the team's efforts.

Area of Improvement Details:

Summary of Area of Improvement: Establish effective plans: Included in the DRP documentation was only a list of individuals and entries which needed to be contacted. Due to this, the team was forced to establish a command structure themselves. The DRP, Backup, and communication plan need to contain, the establishment of an efficient, flexible, scalable, and responsive command structure.

Contributing factors:

Plans: Communication, Backup, and DRP Plans

Policies: The hierarchy policies need to be defined in the given plan.

Documents: The plans need to be independent and separate detailed documents to increase their effectiveness. All documents that need to be part of the DRP such as the DPP, BRP, and BIA need to be finalized and approved. There should be a checklist to verify that the DRP is ready to be implemented.

Consequences: The inclusion of the contact list in the communication plan allowed the recovery team to know which entities to contact. There was confusion and precious time was lost in an emergency when seconds count as a result of lack of information.

Ways to improve: The best solution is to relocate the warm site to another location which should be around a hundred miles away to avoid potential regional disaster.