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The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have taught many busineses one thing: prepare for the unexpected.
Gartner predicts
that two out of five enterprises that experience a disaster the magnitude of the World Trade
Center attack will go out of business within five years. Gartner also says the Internet can serve as a lifeline
for business communications during an emergency. Email, instant messaging, and web sites are among the Internet-based
means of communication that can be leveraged.
The September 11 attack on the World Trade Center has changed the face of disaster for U.S. businesses, which must
now prepare for kinds of threats and a scale of damage never before imagined.
Companies should take steps to make their businesses less dependent on a single office or data infrastructure.
Consider implementing technologies that can quickly duplicate company data at a remote location. Evaluate the costs
and benefits of building redundant IT sites.
Cybercon World-Class data center can be your primary or backup IT site. It can be your Internet communication center.
Disaster Planning and Recovery Services:
- Online Backup and Storage Sevices:
Setup fee: US$395. Monthly fee: US$295 per month for 100GB backup space.
- Data Center Rack Spaces:
Full Rack:
Setup fee: US$680 per full rack. Monthly fees: US$600/month per full lockable rack (42U).
Cage Spaces:
Setup fee: $1250 per 100 square feet. Monthly fee: $1950 per 100 square feet.
Disaster Planning and Recovery Checklist:
- Analyze your business and rank your business needs in terms of priorities;
-- What business needs have to be back up and running within minutes or hours?
-- What can be down for 24 hours?
-- What services or functions could be down for a week or two weeks?
- Identify and prioritize risks, such as natural disasters, insider threats and physical, as well as cyber, terrorist
attacks. Develop plans and policies to lesson those risks;
- Put together recovery teams with defined personnel, roles, functions and hierarchy;
- Do you have the backup systems in place to keep the business running?
- Are backups automatic and done in periodic intervals, such as every minute, every hour or every day? Figure out your
backup priorities. Not everything needs to be backed up every hour but some things should;
- Don't have all your IT people working in the same place. If something happened to that building, you would lose all of
your talent and it would cripple your ability to get the network up and running again;
- Figure out your biggest over potential failures. Is it power, Internet access, a building or phone lines?
- If you're a software company, is your source code spread around so if something happens to one server or one location,
all isn't lost?
- Map out your network. Know what's on it and where it's located.
- Know the systems running on your network;
- Know where workers are supposed to be located and have contact information for them and their families. Set up
notification procedures, such as calling trees;
- Have contact information for business partners, contractors, consultants and vendors at hand;
- Set up generators to keep your electronics functioning;
- Keep backups off site;
- Have mirrored data centers and servers;
- Do you have a backup ISP or teleco?
- Set up escape routes for your buildings and make sure employees are familiar with them;
- Establish quick-ship programs with vendors to get the equipment you might need to replace to get back in operation;
- Plan for remote access needs in case you suddenly can't work onsite.
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