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Disaster Recovery, IT
Service Management, IT Job Description, Sarbanes Oxley, and IT Salary
Full news feed
May 13th, 2008
Change Control Needs to be Implemented for DRP and BCP to Work
 Analysts confirm that approximately 80% of all
software released into production will fail; and 70-80% of the cost of ownership
of such business applications is related to finding and fixing these errors. In
order to increase productivity and promote cost savings, it is imperative to
consider the source of these failures, as well as the nature of the production
environments
Add to that the processes necessary to support a Business
Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan and enterprises have an ever increasing
complex problem. more info
May 10th, 2008
Disk from space shuttle crash recovered
(Computerworld) Researchers who extracted data from
a hard drive onboard the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia say the device was so
thoroughly damaged in the shuttles fiery crash that it just looked like a
cracked "hunk of metal" when it appeared at their door six months later.
Data recovery specialists at Kroll Ontrack Inc.
painstakingly retrieved 99% of the information stored on the charred 400MB
Seagate hard drive's 2.5-in. platters over a two day period after the device was
discovered six months after the 2003 shuttle crash. The device was found in a
dried up lake bed along the shuttle's debris area.
The successful retrieval of the data was disclosed in the April, 2008, issue
of the Physical Review E journal, which published data from tests performed by
the shuttle astronauts on the critical viscosity of xenon gas, according to
published reports. The results of the tests were stored on the disk and
retrieved by Kroll.
The Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the
atmosphere of Earth on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven crew members and
scattering debris across Texas and Louisiana. more info
May 2nd, 2008
The Importance of a Business Resumption and Continuity Plan is Key to Disaster Planning
Disaster recovery has always been a key concern
in virtually all companies. But the widespread damage from Hurricane Katrina has
companies re-evaluating their planning, procedures and overall systems to make
sure they can survive a major outage.
Wherever data resides, it must be protected. With this
idea as the driving force, companies are looking for new and easier-to-manage
ways to safeguard company databases, records and files.
When a disaster
does strike (be it a fire, a flooded data center or a catastrophic malware
attack) companies need to take several steps to reduce downtime and get
operations back to normal.
A business resumption and
continuity plan should be in place before any disaster occurs. more info
May 1st, 2008
Mac Back-up released
Berkeley Data Systems released Mac Mozy public
beta, the first unlimited online backup service for Mac users
worldwide. The service allows Mac users to encrypt and automatically back
up all of their digital media content online, including collections from iTunes
and iPhoto.
 
Designed as a consumer service, Mac Mozy leverages
Apples innovative Spotlight Search technology, allowing users to easily select
the types of files they want to back up. The service installs quickly and runs
quietly in the background. Backup speeds vary from user to user, largely
determined by the upload speed of the consumers internet connection.
Mac Mozy offers an added measure of privacy by
allowing its users to choose between a Mozy encryption key and a private
encryption key. Incremental backups and block level differentials are included,
which means subsequent backups complete at a much faster rate than the initial
backup. Mozys servers also retain the most recent version of a file as well as
30 days worth of previously modified file versions. Customers may retrieve files
or versions of the files via the internet or by requesting a DVD restore with
next-day delivery. more info
April 25th, 2008
Risk Taken by Not Shipping Backup Tapes Off-Site
(Computerworld) University of Miami officials last week acknowledged that
six backup tapes from its medical school that contained more than 2 million
medical records was stolen in March from a van that was transporting the data to
an off-site facility.
The vice president of communications at the university said a vehicle
used by Archive America Ltd. to transport the patient data was broken into in
downtown Coral Gables, Fla. Thieves removed a transport case carrying the
schools computer backup tapes.
For reasons the VP could not explain, Archive America waited 48 hours
before finally notifying the university about the break-in and theft. Officials
from the transport firm could not be reached.
The university posted an alert about the incident a full month after the
backup tapes were stolen. In a statement, the senior vice president for medical
affairs and dean of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said,
Even though they were confident that the patients data was safe, we felt that it
was in the best interest of the physician-patient relationship that the incident
should be transparent.
Since the incident, the senior VP said that the university temporarily
stopped transporting backup data off-site. At this point, the University is not
transporting anything until they conduct their own internal evaluation of the
incident and see if there is anything that could have been done differently or
better. more info
April 19th, 2008
How Do Mobile Workers Get Protected in a Disaster
From mobile workers perspectives, up-to-the-minute information is the
life blood of their jobs. Regardless of whether they are in a home office or on
the other side of the globe, speed and dependability are the keys to
successfully doing their jobs. From an IT departmentÂ’s perspective, they must
support the needs of all employees, while diligently maintaining security
policies, which is becoming increasingly challenging now that the majority of
the workforce has stepped beyond the corporate walls. Can these two opposing
forces be reconciled? Can remote access be both fast and secure from any
location?
Data at rest is growing much faster than network throughput. That makes
it difficult to get backups completed on time and on budget – not to mention
trying to recover from an IT emergency.
The
first is to accomplish backups in a timely yet accurate manner. Given organic
data growth, and that each logical data object has between four and eight copies
somewhere in the network, even differential backups can be tough to fit into
assigned windows. Synchronous or live-to-live data models are even more
bandwidth intensive and latency intolerant.
 
The
second challenge is minimizing downtime. In the event of a failure or disaster,
how quickly can backed-up data be restored? Considering a differential backup
can take 8 hours or more to complete, and only represents 10-20 percent of the
total data set, a full restore can be daunting. According to Ziff Davis
Research, the average organization has 94TB of managed storage, and getting that
data across the network only begins after the systems have been physically
restored.
Rather than add more bandwidth, or invest in expensive, dedicated storage
networks, WAN optimization can improve IP network performance sufficient to turn
recovery into continuity. To help meet the objectives outlined above, a WAN
optimization solution must be able to do three separate tasks for true business
continuity: restrict bandwidth to backup applications during the allowed window
and allocate it to critical applications in the event of a disaster, overcome
latency and bandwidth limitations on the wire, and provide acceleration to
roaming or displaced users redirected to alternative data
sources. more info
April 13th, 2008
The Magic of Creating a Disaster Plan - Data and Backup
There is some magic that happens when you follow some basic steps in creating
a  functioning Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Plan. You should start with:
- An objective to get back to a fully functioning data center and
business
- Know what data is necessary and what is nice to have
- Validate that you have the data you will need
- Assume that anything critical will fail
- Focus on quick solutions that will minimize outages
- Have sufficient resources available before you start
- Encrypt data but know how to get at it in an emergency
- Focus on Recovery Time Objective (RTO) with a Recovery Point Ojectivie
(RPO)
more info
April 2nd, 2008
During a recovery process what are the signs your staff is under stress
During a disater recovery processyou
will need all hands on deck. In addition to a entire range of other
personnel and resource issues, you will need to know how your team is
doing and is stress of the situation you are in causing things to go
badly.
Some of the things that
you should look for are:
-
Team members feeling close to
tears much of the time
-
Team members finding it hard to
concentrate and make decisions
-
Team members being short tempered
with people at home and at work
-
Team members feeling tired most of
the time and or sleeping badly
-
Team members feeling stretched
beyond their limits at the end of the day
-
Team members drinking and smoking
more to help them get through the day
-
Team members feeling that they
just can not cope
-
Team members eating when they are
not hungry
-
Team members feeling that they
have achieved nothing at the end of the
day more info
March 25th, 2008
We have a Disaster Recovery Plan - But Will it Work?
We have got a plan! - Many a CIO has come to rue
making such a blanket statement to a CEO regarding the companyÂ’s disaster
preparedness. A decade of regional calamities has shown that traditional
approaches to disaster planning have failed to keep organizations operational.
IT-focused recovery plans can leave the overall organization in the lurch
because they often do not address such business issues as handling a disaster
that is regional in nature; employee availability; communications; travel and
transportation; and data location and availability. But an integrated business
continuity and resilience plan can take some of the pressure off CIOÂ’s by
reducing the business impacts of a disruptive event, speeding recovery times and
delivering value to the organization—even if a disaster never
strikes. more info
March 19th, 2008
Disaster Recovery versus Business Continuity
Enterprises rely on business critical information; this
makes it imperative for IT departments to protect against unexpected data loss
from disasters. Both replication and backup involve large amounts of information
transferred globally but limitations in the WAN can make it difficult to execute
the plan effectively. A preventative plan in place should always include WAN
acceleration to facilitate disaster recovery.
more info
March 15th, 2008
Disaster Recovery versus Business Continuity
The term
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity are often used interchangeably. They
are in fact, different but complementary components of a business's overall
recovery and continuity planning. Whereas Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) is
concerned with the recovery of systems and infrastructure components, Business
Continuity Planning has a larger scope - namely, the determination of which
business components and functions need to be recovered - and those which can be
ignored. This paper explores several of the key components of a business
continuity planning effort. It also provides a high level framework for the
creation, implementation, and maintenance of a Business Continuity
Plan. more info
March 5th, 2008
Whaling Security Attacks Have Can Put Your Disaster Recovery Plan at Risk
For the last couple of years, security researchers
have been sounding warnings that phishers could turn their attention to
super-personalized attacks targeted at high-level corporate employees whaling attacks. Now, however, there
is growing evidence that this type of attack is moving from theory to
practice. The reasons? The bad guys are getting better access to the information
they need to bait these e-mails--both because they are getting better at mining
databases on compromised corporate sites, and because employees are providing
more useful information at networking sites such as LinkedIn and
MySpace.
Once launched, the results of a whaling attack can be
devastating. They are hitting the high-level executives and getting access
to these individuals entire workstations.
Like all spearphishing or
targeted phishing attacks, whaling involves personal information, but in this
case the targets are high-level, high-value individuals whose credentials,
if compromised, can endanger an entire organization. The targets are carefully
chosen, and the number of e-mails distributed is small. Where a massive phishing
attack might involve billions of e-mails sent from botnets with a million
zombies, whaling usually involves anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand
e-mails, which are sent from a botnet with perhaps 20,000 compromised computers.
Conventional methods for identifying phishing attacks depend on spotting a lot
of identical messages, so the small scale of whaling attacks makes them
essentially invisible to Internet scanners. more info
February 29th, 2008
SSD - Solid State Drives are a great Disaster Planning Solution
EMC may have been first out of the gate with an enterprise-class
solid-state drive (SSD), but it looks like the rest of the pack is ready to join
the field. There's a new round of start-ups and joint ventures aimed at
developing flash and SSD technology expressly for high-end enterprise
environments as opposed to traditional laptop and mobile device markets. The
newest player on the scene is Pliant Technology, led by Maxtor and Quantum
co-founder Jim McCoy. The company is making the rounds of leading venture
capitalists with plans for a new controller mechanism that will boost flash
performance up to RAM-quality, with possible demo models out by the end of the
year. Even closer to launch is the SSD PRO 7000 system from Imation, jointly
developed with controller technology from Mtron Co. The system is due out in the
first quarter and boasts a maximum read speed of 120 MBps, with a write speed of
90 MBps and 0.1 ms random access. According to industry observers, demand for
SSDs among enterprise users is white hot. more info
February 20th, 2008
Downtime Costs are High
ESG has found that there is an increase in the number of
companies and organizations requiring 24 x 365 days of IT uptime. In fact,
research indicates that 36% of enterprises will incur significant revenue loss
or other adverse business impact if they have even an hour or less of downtime
on their mission-critical applications. Almost 15% indicate they cannot tolerate
any downtime. Virtually any amount of downtime can mean lost productivity, lost
revenue, lost customers and lost opportunities -- not to mention damage to
brand. This is why you need a strong disaster proof solution. more info
February 15th, 2008
Janco finds over one third of enterprises will lose significant revenue with one hour outage
Janco Associates, Inc. (http://www.e-janco.com) has found
that there is an increase in the number of companies and organizations requiring
24 x 365 days of IT uptime. In fact, Janco research
indicates that 36% of enterprises indicate they will incur significant revenue
loss or other adverse business impact if they have even an hour or less of
downtime on their mission-critical applications. Almost 15% indicate they cannot
tolerate any downtime. In the past, this type of business demand was only
consigned to a relatively small group. However, many more organizations of all
sizes, in all industries and located across the globe, now require applications
to be running and data to be always available. The needs of these organizations
go far beyond simply recovery, requiring an environment that maintains business
continuity during and immediately after a disaster. more info
February 5th, 2008
Under Sea Cables Cut - Internet Service at Risk
(BBC) A submarine cable in
the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks
in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.
The Falcon cable, owned by a firm which operates
another damaged cable, led to a critical telecom breakdown, according to one
local official.
 The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a
repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom. The earlier break disrupted service in Egypt, the Middle
East and India.
The situation is critical for us in terms of
congestion, chief executive of Dubai's ISP DU, told The Associated Press,
following the most recent break.
Wednesdays incident caused disruption to 70% of the
nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to
60% disruption.
Flag Telecom said a repair ship was expected to
arrive at the site of the first break - 8.3km from Alexandria in Egypt - on 5
February, with repair work expected to take a week.
A repair ship deployed to the second break - 56km
from Dubai - was expected to arrive at the site in the next few days, the firm
said.
Web returns
The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the
Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.
 |
INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE
1 Polyethylene
cover
2,4 Stranded steel armour wires
3,5 Tar-soaked
nylon yarn
6 Polycarbonate insulator
7 Copper sheath
8 Protective core
9 Optical fibres
Not to
scale |
A second cable thought to lie alongside it -
SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also
split.
FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine
communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and
the Middle East.
SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East
Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in
service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3
system, according to research firm TeleGeography.
The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of
available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75%
percent.
As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East
re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and
across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The cause of the break has still not been confirmed.
Initial reports suggested that it could have been snapped by a ship's anchor.
But Egypts communications ministry said damage to the
cables in the Mediterranean was not caused by ships.
The transport ministry said that footage recorded by
onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic
in the area when the cables were damaged.
The ministrys maritime transport committee reviewed
footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables
were cut and no ships sailed the area, a statement said.
Internet service providers said they expected India's
to be back to about 80% of its usual speed by the end of Friday.
In Egypt Minister of Communications and Information
Technology .said he expected to be at the same capacity within two days.
However, it is not before ten days until the
internet service returns to its normal performance. more info
January 27th, 2008
The Cost of Business Continuity
 Research
clearly demonstrates that a good business continuity plan is by no stretch
reserved for organizations with huge budgets. When you consider how many
organizations actually use their BC plan, and that any company without one could
be just a day or two from a "fatal issue," the real costs for business
continuity assurance begin to look miniscule. We were encouraged to find that
not only did 73 percent of organizations have formalized BC plans in place, but
also that 87 percent of those plans include a remote disaster recovery site as a
failover option. Clearly, real-time protection of data is a priority.
 We also
found that organizations are prioritizing the protection of customer-centric IT
services in their plans to assure BC. Survey respondents ranked customer support
as the top service to protect, with e-mail and phone systems also ranking among
the top four. A lot of people might have guessed that the primary focus among IT
services companies would be order processing or the like, the assumption being
that the only thing businesses really care about is the cash register. But our
survey results show that this is not the case at all; the talk about focusing on
the customer is in fact being carried out as part of operational planning. IT
leaders are obviously demonstrating alignment with the business goal of
customer-centricity.
more info
January 27th, 2008
Uptime the key issue that drives Disaster Planning
 There is an increase in the number of
companies and organizations requiring 24 x 365 days of IT uptime. In fact,
research indicates that 36% of enterprises indicate they will incur significant
revenue loss or other adverse business impact if they have even an hour or less
of downtime on their mission-critical applications.
Almost 15% indicate
they cannot tolerate any downtime. More and more organizations of all sizes now
require applications to be running and data to be always available. The needs of
these organizations go far beyond simply recovery, requiring an environment that
maintains business continuity during and immediately after a disaster. To make
it more interesting, the number and types of applications that require this
level of protection is very diverse.
In
fact, in the enterprise space 14% of the businesses polled said they cannot
tolerate any application downtime. More than 58% cannot tolerate four hours or
less of application downtime. All told, more than 80% of Enterprise-class and
mid-tier respondents reported that they cannot tolerate more than 24 hours of
application unavailability2. What is even more interesting is that survey
respondents were not just from the Financial Sector but also included
Government, Manufacturing, Retail and Health Care (including Pharmaceutical).
Some of the reasons for these survey results include the following:
- Retail: The critical applications
that track point-of-sales data and enable inventory and distribution
require applications that are always available. Being able to react
quickly to changing conditions can mean the difference between
profitability and loss. Online shopping and the customerÂ’s experience are
also very important to retailers
, and downtime is not acceptable.
- Health Care: With the digitization of medical images and patient records,
retaining and ensuring availability of these applications and files is beyond
mission-critical. Especially when you consider the pervasive use of technology
in the operating room, effectiveness can actually be measured in the number of
lives, not just dollars, saved.
- Manufacturing: Competitive pressures drive companies to run as efficiently
as possible. Just-in-time manufacturing processes that coordinate shipments
from suppliers around the world demand 24 x 7 availability.
- Globalization: Companies are becoming increasingly dependent on a global
economy. Many have established key technology in “follow-the-sun” modes that
require 24 x 7 availability.
- Increased sensitivity to outages: Business continuity is now a
boardroom-level concern. In many cases, it is the CEO who mandates that the
business be fully protected. Even worse than an outage itself is the fallout
from negative press, loss of customer confidence and, for public companies,
potential impact to stock prices.
Regardless of the industry, the trend is clear: more businesses require
highly available solutions. Not only is this expanding along industry lines, but
we also see mid-tier companies requiring disaster tolerant
solutions.
more info
January 27th, 2008
Firmware - one more issue to address in your disaster plan
Storage system firmware updates are available as
major and minor releases. Companies like EMC Corp. typically provide a major
release for its Clariion storage systems about once
a year while minor releases come out about once a quarter. Major releases
include significant enhancements to storage system features while minor releases
provide bug fixes for any issues in the major release. The problems that surface
should a company fall behind in its firmware upgrades are increased operational
risks as well as delays if fixes are needed.
The need to keep firmware current stems from
interoperability problems that emerge when
companies change their Fibre Channel SANs. New operating systems, operating
system and database upgrades and new Fibre Channel SAN devices constantly
introduce new capabilities and features into the SAN. Though storage system
vendors typically test for these new features in these products before they are
publicly released, companies may need to apply a patch to use them.
Being down two or three major releases also gets
problematic. While vendors almost always support older major releases, new
patches are based on the last major release. If running an older release, a
company may need to wait while a special patch is prepared for them.
Planning firmware upgrades is an easy-to-overlook
component of system maintenance. But with many companies in lock-down at this
time of year and administrators likely having some free time, December is a good
time to plan for and then take the necessary steps to perform a firmware
upgrade. more info
December 19th, 2007
FCC Requires Backup Power For Cell Sites
Christmas came a bit early this year for manufacturers of backup power
sources. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has released rules mandating
that mobile providers and
local exchange carriers install backup power for cell sites and remote telecom
facilities. The rules are a direct response to the communications meltdown after
Hurricane Katrina. More recently, the bridge collapse in Minneapolis
demonstrated how fragile (and still inadequate) the system is. A
lesser publicized goal of the 700 MHz auction set for next month is to create a
national broadband emergency network. The rules will also require companies to
file a plan in six months about how they will meet the new
demands. more info
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