Fxt2 Task 1 Essay

Disaster Recovery team had previously prepared Disaster preparedness plan, a Backup and Recovery Policy, and a Business Impact Assessment.

In this assignment, I will go over the different items related to the disaster recovery plan. I will go over the purpose of the plan, explain the key elements that go into a plan, the methods of testing the plan, and why we test the plan. All while explaining why the disaster recovery plan is so critical to businesses in the event of an emergency.

We have established a comprehensive Emergency Operations Plan to handle our resources to provide safe environment for our patients in the event of adverse conditions such as power failures, water, fuel shortages, flooding, and communication breakdowns. Our facilities are prepared, staff knows responsibilities to extend patient care under disrupted utilities and other emergency situations.

The Emergency Response Plan was revised with newly created position of Director of Emergency Management as well as department, incorporation of emergency support functions and newly added emergency notification system protocols (VT, 2010). Modifications was made to the University-wide Safety and Security Policies. Major changes was made to the umbrella safety and security policy which was renamed from the Campus Security to University Safety and Security which provides oversight and coordination for all campus policies and committees responsible for safety and physical security (VT, 2010).

Rapid recovery from tremulous disruption can be achieved when the elements of resilience are present and utilise and the organisation can manage to bounce back to a stable operational state similar to the state before the initial change.

Due in Week Three: For your selected scenario, describe the key elements of the Disaster Recovery Plan to be used in case of a disaster and the plan for testing the DRP.

The goal of the information disaster recovery processes and a robust contingency plan is to maintain the resiliency of General Hospital during any type of data disruption. Continuation of essential functions at all times requires the ability to adapt to changes and risks. The disaster recovery and contingency plans consider risk management and other security and emergency management activities that are

Being able to create fool proof security for hardware systems, hack proof networks, etc. is all part of building a resilient technology layer. Organizations need to account for disasters not only at their own location but also outside of themselves to analyze the effect of disasters at partner organizations. For example, a disruption at an ISP could render a complete outage to accessing the internet and the internal servers to be available to the outside world.

Crisis Management Team – There are several events that constitute a crisis including, but not limited to, disruption of services, ethical misconduct of upper management, lawsuit, workplace violence, etc. In the case of the university, issues like a power outage could cause complete disruption for the 350 employees or strong winds breaking the glass and causing employee injuries could cause a medical emergency crisis. Since the crisis is so varied, the team involved could span multiple departments and agencies, including private and public enterprises, to work in tandem with university policies to handle the crisis. This team reports to the super umbrella of the Emergency Response Team.

When a crisis arises unexpectedly it places an organization in a precarious situation that jeopardizes the reputation of the company, the brands, key stakeholders as well as the employees. This has become even more critical in recent years as media outlets are no longer the only source of reporters, anyone with a cell phone equipped with a camera can report a developing crisis. For this reason, it is paramount that businesses in the modern era have an emergency plan in place before a crisis develops. A crisis is going to present numerous challenges even with a plan; not having a plan in place at all will drastically increase the odds of the crisis escalating to a point that it no longer is manageable. The intent of creating an emergency plan ahead of time is to be as prepared as possible to identify a developing crisis, manage the crisis and move beyond the crisis. There are a multitude of components that go into an effective emergency management plan from communication, to establishing a team, training key stakeholders as well as communicating internally and externally. In the midst of a crisis, there will not be sufficient time to bring everyone involved up to the level of proficiency required to deal with the developing crisis. For this reason, it is vital that all individuals who will be involved in managing the crisis have been properly trained and a robust emergency plan is in place. In some cases not

The team prioritized investments for disaster recovery initiatives, and in conjunction with business unit leaders, designed a tiered model highlighting recovery priorities. These priorities were validated with IT infrastructure leaders to help ensure alignment. As failover

The effective contingency plan should only include the high-priority items and it should be as simple as possible. The purpose for the contingency plans is to response quickly when there are changes of an organization’s current strategy. For example, the predefined strategy is based on some assumptions about the economy but the outcome is not what the organization assumed, the contingency plan can support the organization to react promptly. The effective contingency planning includes a seven step process. First, Identify both beneficial and unfavorable events that could possibly derail the strategy. This step includes the development of the formal contingency planning policy statement in order to provide it to relevant stakeholders the authority and guideline that required developing the effective contingency plan. Policy will be published when executive confirms it. To gather the high-level business requirements, define scope and allocating project resources. Second, Specify trigger points and calculate about when contingent events are likely to occur. It involves the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify threat scenarios, prioritize key business processes and critical systems for business continuity. Executive approval on those choices of the critical business functions and the priority to recover during the disaster. Third, Assess the

An important component of the preparedness program is the crisis communications plan. A business must be able to respond promptly, accurately and confidently during an emergency in the hours and days that follow. Many different audiences must be reached with information specific to their interests and needs. The image of the business can be positively or negatively impacted by public perceptions of the handling of the incident ("Crisis Communications Plan", 2015).

Emergency response procedures are a very important role in the business continuity and disaster recovery plans. It is important when creating an emergency response and disaster recovery activity is simple because when an emergency strikes people are less likely to remember a lot of rules, details, and procedures. The more complicated the emergency response plans for your business the less likely the plans will be effective in a real emergency. It is very important that a company has roles established on who is in charge and who has the authority to make decisions. If many employees of a business have the impression of thinking they have the authority to make choices, possible chaos could be created. If there is nobody that thinks they have the authority to make informed decisions for the company in possible disasters, then the situation could spiral for the worst and could take a long time for the company to resume back to normal business operations (Snedaker, 2014). The business continuity and disaster recovery plan should include an internal emergency response capability in the event of emergency responders not being available.

News stations cover various disasters every single day. Sitting behind the screen, people effortlessly deceive themselves into thinking that they will not face similar situations. However the reality is that not only are everyone potential victims of such scenarios, but they are also liable to the aftermath of the incident and its ripple effects. Acknowledging the possibility of experiencing a disaster is the first step towards effective recovery and responsiveness. The next step is to formulate a response system to various disaster scenarios and test it out. During the formulation of a plan, the disaster scenarios and objectives need to be agreed upon while concurrently managerial and technical actions are thoroughly defined (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2007, p. 68). Evidently, there are costs associated with developing a contingency plan which in the short-term may appear unnecessary; nevertheless as a response to the increasing number of disasters, contingency planning is essential to scheme to allow an organization to swiftly return to its operations while avoiding superfluous costs and minimizing casualties as a result of the increase in the overall effectiveness of response to an emergency or critical situation.