3 important documents your IT team needs for disaster recovery planning
by. Tim Daugherty
In the past when people would discuss or have questions about their “DR Plans” they would refer to the IT department. Why did that happen? Well since it had to deal with the recovery of technology and systems, of course it had to be an “IT thing”. So with that type of thinking the disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning was driven by the IT department. Working in the IT department, it was a great thing. IT would determine what systems were critical and needed to be recovered. Dictating all the systems criticalities and recovery strategies for all the business units in the credit union was part of the responsibilities that came along with leading the DR planning process. IT would create their DR plan then tell all the other business units what systems were going to be recovered and in what order. If business units needed a specific system that was to be recovered that was further down on the recovery list, the business unit would have to wait for it to be recovered.
Now, IT has evolved into more of a support role as it pertains to disaster recovery planning. Using the data identified in the BIA (business impact analysis), FIA (Financial Impact Analysis) and Risk Assessments, IT can plan out their support role.
1. Some of the BIA data IT uses to help create their disaster recovery plan are:
- Business processes and supporting systems/application
- Recovery Time Objectives
- Recovery Point Objectives
2. After reviewing the BIA data IT can make a more informative decision on systems/application recovery efforts to help support the business units.
- The FIA data helps IT determine where to focus budgeting for DR. It also helps confirm that the current spending of funds are directed at the proper system/application recoveries.