Saturday, November 3, 2012

Putting a disaster recovery plan into practice

As a DoD auditor, I hammer DoD sites and entities for not having or not having adequate disaster recovery plans.  I got to put words to practice in my own life with the impact of hurricane Sandy directly impacting me.  In light of what happened, we are revamping our procedures and amending the plans that we already had.

For example, we had planned for wind damage, and the possibility of a power outage.  We didn't plan on evacuating...data from previous storms didn't indicate that we might have to worry about rising water.  However, with the storm picking up steam, hitting us three hours earlier than anticipated and during a high tide; the stream around us was 13' above normal.  Water poured all around the house, which led to a prompt evacuation.

So, with a new threat to add to the threat model, we are revamping our plan.  We are including many of the lessons learned from this event so that we are not caught off guard in the future.  Further, we're keeping the plan in a central location so that everyone can benefit from seeing it and putting it into place.

It would figure that we would not get a hurricane until the very end of hurricane season.  And we know that Winter is just beginning....we're bound to have a snow/ice event.

1 comment:

  1. “So, with a new threat to add to the threat model, we are revamping our plan. “ – That’s just the right way, Greg! Our previous DPR will eventually lose its effectiveness because of the change in the environment within a specific organization. We should always update our DRP to suit our ever changing needs. r

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