Chapter 10 Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery
Objectives • Develop an effective business continuity approach • Manage an effective incident response • Plan for disaster recovery
Business Continuity • Preserves essential organizational assets • Protect resources from damage, destruction, and loss • Serves as an information assurance lifeboat • Does not preserve everything; preserves things essential to continue business operations • Develops and maintains an up-to-date, comprehensive strategy
Business Continuity Planning • Planning mitigates the interruption of essential services • Seeks to re-establish operations quickly by focusing on critical functions • Relies on contingency plans that itemize the steps to follow when needed • First step in building the plan is to identify and prioritize critical assets through risk analysis • Business continuity • Offsite storage and recovery facilities
Continuity and Business Value • Continuity planning • Preparedness plan – prevention and minimization of damage as well as securing or recovering information after a disaster • Developed through a strategic planning process • Characterizes the operational measures followed to prevent avoidable disasters • Enumerates the contingency measures to be adopted, should a disaster occur • Itemizes the replacement and restoration procedures used to ensure the integrity of the information assets
Continuity and Business Value • Contents of continuity plan • Continuity planning process has two goals: • To avoid loss of critical information in a disaster • To return critical information functions to operation as quickly and efficiently as possible • Continuity planning function targets the three components of an IT operation: • Systems • Personnel • Facilities
Continuity and Business Value • Contents of continuity plan (cont’d) • Plans must be established to respond to every possible threat • Key concept is feasibility • Employs ongoing threat modeling and risk assessment processes • To identify and prioritize threats because of the need to identify and address only the feasible options • Establishes a risk analysis procedure • To decide the order in which the threats should be addressed by a formal preparedness response
Proactive Response: Ensuring “Continuous” Continuity • To ensure continuity, build real-time survivability into the overall information function • Immediate “recoverability” – integration of protection strategies with a range of proactive recovery technologies • The result should be a dynamic assurance solution that blends protection elements • Firewalls and intrusion detection systems • Rigor is essential • Survival of critical technology processes is inextricably linked to the continuing effectiveness of functions
Recovery time • Fundamental aim of the business continuity process is to: • Ensure the shortest realistic recovery time possible • Estimate recovery time calculated by determining the Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) • Estimate based on three concepts: • Recovery Time Objective - RTO • Network Recovery Objective - NRO • Recovery Point Objective - RPO
Recovery time • Recovery Time Objective - RTO • Maximum operationally acceptable period of time that a system can be out of service without causing harm • Network Recovery Objective - NRO • Greatest amount of time a network can be out of service • Recovery Point Objective - RPO • The point in time to which data can be restored after a failure
Recovery time • Determining RTO, NRO, and RPO for one environment • RTO/NRO and RPO are mutually supportive, but: • They are different concepts • They support different sets of decisions and protection requirements
Alternative Sites • In the event of a disaster • Systems should be able to switch processing functions efficiently to alternative sites • Relationship between criticality requirements and alternative processing requires an understanding of: • Hotsites • Warmsites • Coldsites
Data Recovery Hotsites • In critical instances requiring an immediate restoration capability • Facilities mirror the real-time processing at the primary site • Provides near instantaneous backup since they operate in parallel • Ensures the optimum potential for total recovery of the data resource and continuity of operation
Data Recovery Warmsites • Provide the equipment and communications interfaces for establishing an immediate backup operation • Cannot ensure that all the data will be preserved • Usually the most practical approach • Extremely cost efficient
Data Recovery Coldsites • It provides a degree of protection • Value – resumption of business operations as soon as the staff is moved • Disadvantage – significant data from the primary site might be lost or have to be rebuilt
Analysis Processes • Identify risks to critical systems and the effect their failure has on overall business processes • Two kinds of analyses are associated with continuity plans development: • Business impact analysis • Risk analysis
Analysis Processes • Business impact analysis • Determines the effect that a potential disruption might have on a function or information asset • Risk analysis • Examines the critical functions and resources that support operations detailed in the impact study • Driven by an estimate of the overall criticality of the system • Major component of risk analysis is disaster tolerance
Analysis Processes • Risk analysis (cont’d) • Disaster tolerance • Implies various levels of criticality • Varying degrees of associated responses, which form four categories: • Minimal criticality • Average criticality • High criticality • Mission-critical
Ingredients of a Continuity Plan • Continuity plans have two steps: • The assumptions about the circumstances of the plan • Events that could change or affect those assumptions • The strategy for maintaining continuity, based on those assumptions
Ingredients of a Continuity Plan • Step 1: Assumption • Derived from an understanding of the threats and the associated threat modeling • Are dynamic since: • The threat picture changes constantly • The assumptions have to be periodically updated • Should include the: • Timing • Extent of the threat • Areas of potential harm
Ingredients of a Continuity Plan • Step 2: Priorities and strategy • Strategy adopted and the philosophy that drives continuity • Must be understood and accepted throughout organization • Must adopt and communicate a single common continuity approach • Should originate from and align with the stated organization strategy and philosophy
Instituting the Business Continuity Management Process • Management goal: keep critical systems operating and react to failures as soon as possible • Management plan: protect the maximum number of assets with the highest degree of assurance • Five questions to ensure that the plan has the right set of elements: • What are the critical business systems? • What is the business impact of each of these systems? • What risks are associated with each system? • What is the level of integrity required for each system? • What are the RTO and the RPO for each system?
Four Phases of the Business Continuity Planning Process • Business continuity planning is best done in phases • There are four phases: • Identify critical business functions • Establish Recovery Time Objectives • State the explicit work (SOW) • Ensure acceptance and understanding of the solution
Four Phases of the Business Continuity Planning Process • Planning process
Phase 1: Identify the Critical Business Functions • Function criticality is derived from a characterization of the explicit value of: • Products • Services, including supporting functions • Governance or administration factors • Once these have been identified and evaluated they are assessed based on their overall contribution • Volume and load factors – measures employed to describe the contribution
Phase 1: Identify the Critical Business Functions • Matrix allows the organization to understand the relative contributions
Phase 1: Identify the Critical Business Functions • Following classification characterizes the activities in the evaluation matrix: • Critical activities • Included activities • Non-essential activities • Determining feasible alternatives • Whether there are other ways to perform a given operation • Whether it could be carried out by a similar set of tasks • This determination must consider all redundancy provisions
Phase 1: Identify the Critical Business Functions • Know that it is an ongoing effort • Perform needs assessments on a continuous or regular basis because organizations change constantly • Activities designated as “critical” • Must be addressed appropriately • It must be possible to validate them by direct observation
Phase 2: Set Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) • Specified in the order of their criticality after considering redundancy and contract alternatives • Assign a value describing how soon it must be operational • An estimate of the resources required to achieve it • Establish a mechanism to ensure the resources will be available • Identify the internal and then any external resources and contractors • Identify any potential shortfalls in either resources or capabilities • Itemize and cross-reference shortfall areas to the RTO
Phase 3: Identify and Record Solution in a Statement of Work • Statement of work: • Is a specification itemizing the steps to be taken to meet each RTO • Details the procedures followed to address foreseeable problems • Identifies areas of shortfall in personnel, work area, equipment, supplies, or service capability • Is a set of recommendations for how that shortfall will be addressed • Specifies the organization’s assumptions about continuity • Provides clear guidance for each foreseeable contingency
Phase 4: Ensure Understanding • Ensure that all participants in the process clearly understand their role and accountability • Make appropriate parts of the plan available to each stakeholder • Instill continuity concepts in active projects • Bring the entire organization to the required level of capability • All levels of management have to understand and support the process
Disaster Recovery Planning • Disaster recovery planning or crisis management • Aspect of business continuity management that applies after a disaster • Focus on a narrower aspect of continuity • Identify every disaster contingency and offer a prescription that allows an effective response to each • Oriented toward restoring the technical operations with the aim of bringing an identified set of critical systems back to a desired level of operation
Timing and DRP • Timing is important in the design of the disaster strategy and the implementation of the recovery plan • Estimated time to return to normal operation at the damaged site must be significantly greater than the time it would take to migrate it • A DRP requires understanding of the effect that the downtime has on business processes
Elements of Disaster Planning • Disaster planning has: • Long-term perspective – effective disaster planning centers on anticipating disasters and ensuring the proper solution • Planning process assumptions are based on selecting the most likely disaster scenarios and regularly updating their probability • Short-term perspective – specify the steps taken if a particular disaster occurs • Anticipated events associated with a given scenario have to be clearly understood, laid out, and cross-referenced to the procedures
Elements of Disaster Planning • Types of Disasters • Natural disasters • Localized or area floods • Tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes • Site disasters • Fire, water, and sewer emergencies • Gas leaks, chemical leaks or spills • Telephone or cable interruptions • Explosion or other building failures • Civil disasters • Car, plane, or train crash • Civil disturbance
Elements of Disaster Planning • A disaster recovery plan should be able respond to all credible threats
Elements of Disaster Planning • Three elements include: • Disaster impact description and classification • Requires understanding and describing of the threat implications • Response deployment and communication processes • Designates the right people to react in the case of a disaster • Escalation and reassessment procedures • Helpful if the situation turns out to be worse than anticipated
