Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Training

Disaster Recovery Course Outline

• Introduction and Overview

  Defining Business Continuity Management

  • Business continuity vs. disaster recovery
  • Clarifying the terminology
  • The importance of a BCMS
  • Overview of ISO 22301

  Running BCMS development as a project

  • Obtaining the funding commitments
  • Agreeing on critical success factors
  • Testing deliverables

• Analyzing The Organizational Context

  Setting goals for the BCMS

  • Determining organizational risk appetite
  • Defining the operational environment

  Determining the needs of interested parties

  • Identifying stakeholders
  • Analyzing stakeholder needs
  • Mapping stakeholder relationships

• Documenting Business Continuity Requirements

  Identifying mission-critical continuity needs

  • Evaluating which functions are critical
  • Setting priorities based on time horizons
  • Prioritizing processes and applications

  Performing Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

  • Identifying threats
  • Assessing risks to the enterprise
  • Identifying business-critical activities
  • Prioritizing infrastructure requirements

• Managing Risks to the Organization

  Characterizing risks

  • Defining and identifying the sources of risk
  • Choosing a risk assessment method
  • Communicating risks across the organization

  Developing appropriate responses

  • Matching the response to the risk
  • Taking preventive action
  • Ensuring appropriate contingencies are in place

• Responding to Incidents

  Creating the incident response plan

  • Capturing the planning output
  • Creating incident response team charters
  • Defining roles and responsibilities
  • Responding to incident scenarios
  • Information directories and equipment inventories

  Directing the incident response team

  • Setting up the command center
  • Planning and conducting communications
  • Connecting with emergency services
  • Team actions following an incident

• Designing Contingency Arrangements

  Establishing a standby site

  • Site choices: configuration and acquisition
  • Choosing suppliers: in-house vs. third-party
  • Specifying equipment

  Selecting backup and restore strategies

  • Matching strategy to operational constraints
  • Meeting the organization's storage requirements for vital records

  Restoring communications and recovering users

  • Determining vital users with the BIA
  • Rerouting voice, mail, goods delivery
  • Eliminating single points of failure
  • Connecting end users
  • Meeting varied user-recovery needs

• Testing, Rehearsing and Improving Business Continuity Provisions

  Rehearsing business continuity arrangements

  • Testing plans with a step-by-step process
  • Developing test scenarios and using test results effectively
  • Considering the impact of testing on the organization

  Maintaining and improving the BCMS

  • Applying change control: why and how
  • Ensuring normal developments are accounted for
  • Leveraging test results to improve organizational practices
  • Managing organizational change