APPENDIX 8: ITDR PLAN

<Organization>

IT disaster recovery plan

<Version>

<Date of approval and publishing>

Scope

The disaster recovery (DR) plan covers the following areas:

• <List all systems and infrastructure by the plan>.

Objective

The objective of the IT disaster recovery plan is to assist <organization> in recovering the IT services and infrastructure as required within the business continuity plans.

Team structure

contact list

Roles and responsibilities

Team leader

• Assist in assessing extent of damage to IT facilities and its ability to provide a data processing service to critical business users.
• Determine the recovery plans to be invoked, based on the current status assessment and approval from the business continuity (BC) team leader after the disaster.
• Determine alternative team members and other support members of the recovery process.
• Notify recovery teams of disaster declaration immediately.
• Coordinate all recovery teams.
• Authorize the recovery teams to provide access to the alternative site for relocation of the DR teams and state recovery actions required.
• Report to BC team leader on the status of the recovery effort.
• Manage and monitor the overall ITDR process.
• Continue to provide support services to business users at the DR location.
• Determine the priorities and schedule to initiate normalcy restoration activities with approval from the BC team leader.
• Coordinate normalcy restoration with the BC team leader and other BC teams.

Network team

• Establish a user/system network by establishing connections and arrangements for the server room.
• Coordinate with the ISP to provide the means for wide area network links.
• Re-establish local area networks, access to network resources and the overall end-user connection at the system recovery site.
• Re-establish data and voice communications and access to these facilities.
• Provide ongoing support for data and voice communications and oversee communications integrity.
• Participate in and perform normalcy restoration activities.
• Liaise with other recovery teams to ensure an effective and timely recovery.

Hardware team

• Prioritize the provision of hardware that may be required to support critical services.
• Plan, coordinate transportation of, install, and maintain hardware at the alternative site.
• Coordinate with the network and communications team to ensure hardware connectivity with local, regional, and remote locations and third-party entities.
• Ensure that the hardware resources are sufficient to meet the processing requirements at the alternative site.

Software team

Platform:

• Coordinate restoration of stand-alone operating systems onto the main servers.
• Coordinate restoration of network operating systems.
• Ensure the security policy of the network operating system is adequate and appropriate with relevant controls configured to authenticate and authorize users’ access to network resources.
• Ensure that the active directory is set up appropriately with the required group and individual privileges and services for effective and secure access.
• Assess the operating system for system and data integrity before release to end-users.
• Update the DR team leader on the status of platform recovery and availability at the alternative site.

Applications:

• Coordinate restoration of applications and data which are critical to end-users and business operations as a whole.
• Follow documented procedures to recover all application files to a point in time as close to that of the event as possible.
• Assess the applications for system and data integrity before release to end-users.
• Ensure backups of applications and data are scheduled once the alternative site is active.
• Update the DR team leader on the status of application recovery and availability at the alternative site.

End-user software:

• Coordinate restoration of end-user software such as desktop operating systems, office and mail applications, and other tools and utilities required by users to perform the day-to-day business operations.
• Ensure that a standard pre-approved loadset comprising applications, tools, and utilities is maintained and restored onto end-user systems for recovery at the alternative site.
• Update the DR team leader on the status of recovery and availability of end-user applications at the alternative site.
• Assess the software for system and data integrity before release to end-users.

Data center operators team

• Ensure that access to the backup media is available.
• Communicate with hardware team and network and communications team to arrange travel to the alternative site if needed.
• Ensure availability and operation of data centers at the alternative site.
• Ensure adequate environmental controls are available at the alternative site to operate the production system from this site.
• Verify adequate physical security, such as access control devices for the data center, is available.
• Verify that access to the server rooms is limited to only those authorized and that they are monitored through access logs.
• Continuously monitor the physical and environmental controls at the data center and liaise with other recovery teams to facilitate recovery and operations at the alternative site.
• Participate in and perform normalcy restoration activities.
• Liaise with other recovery teams to ensure an effective and timely recovery.

End-user support team

• Act as a support team to end-users facing issues with hardware, software, or access to the network or network resources.
• Manage the end-user-level interfaces for incidents, problems and other end-user requests.
• Respond to end-user requests and communicate with the hardware, software, and networking and communications team to resolve end-user requests in a timely manner.
• Assist the hardware, software, and network and communications teams as required during the restoration and recovery process.
• Ensure end-users have access to e-mails, applications, and shared folder data as required to perform critical business operations at the alternative site.

Backup recovery team

• Ensure that access to the backup media is available.
• Confirm that backup media has not been destroyed in the disaster.
• Ensure backup media is secured and maintained until requested by the recovery teams.
• Provide the required media to the recovery teams on a timely basis.
• Restore backups at the alternative site for recovery and perform ongoing backups once systems are back in production at the alternative site.
• Restore systems and data using backups available in a predetermined sequence based on the application architecture and criticality of the system being restored.
• Schedule new pick-up point with off-site storage.
• Initialize new tapes as needed in the recovery process.
• Perform and schedule backups at the disaster recovery site based on business requirements and considering the available infrastructure and capacity.
• Ensure backup tapes are sent to a new off-site location for storage.
• Participate in and perform normalcy restoration activities.
• Liaise with other recovery teams to ensure an effective and timely recovery.

Activities to be performed immediately after a disaster

Activities to be performed during disaster recovery

Relevant locations

Primary recovery site

<Address>.

<Map>.

<Other necessary information>.

<Phone numbers/e-mail addresses>.

Secondary recovery site

<Address>.

<Map>.

<Other necessary information>.

<Phone numbers/e-mail addresses>.

Disaster declaration matrix

Recovery procedures

Prerequisites

<List all actions required to be performed before the start of the recovery process>.

Detailed recovery tasks

List of documents/manuals to be stored off site

• input forms
• user manuals
• system manuals.

<Specific details, such as name, version and storage location at alternative site for the above documents, to be updated on implementation>.

Contact list

Vendor list