They said they would not happen to them. Or could not. They were prepared. They said they took a step.
They were wrong.
Computer system excluding the telephone system, soft underberry # 50; 50 hedge funds that manage 1 billion dollars of most small and medium enterprise client assets, how to prepare for disaster 25 thousand I am surprised that I will spend dollars. It is such a trivial thing to guarantee business in the event of a disaster! But I see this disastrous deed repeatedly over and over.
Over the past fifteen years as an information security expert in large companies such as Merrill Lynch and Ernst and Young For 15 years as an independent business continuity / high availability infrastructure consultant for small and medium enterprises for 10 years, I have seen many solutions Although it was done, there were not so many solutions. Big broker house maintains a mirrored trading floor, cheap and flimsy USB hard drive and old DLT backup tape, fortunately business continuity & # 39; a lot of companies with solutions It offers. And the best solution is not to pay a heavy price.
In the past two years, I was forced to dismiss more than 50% of employees for bad plans and bad luck to six companies that were discussing consulting. With the exception of either of these cases, it was possible to avoid such fatal losses by simple precautionary precautionary measures.
The first case to come to mind is a 10 year old investment company on 41-year-old Manhattan and Lexington Avenue. Two years ago, they (or investors) decided to investigate business continuity strategy. They had some bad experiences with 9/11 and NYC blackouts and I do not want to shorten again. So I had the time to discuss their DR / BC plans with them - not only they had, but also that one thing they had - backup tapes - were not off the scene To find out. Why they were asked, they said that the secretary who has this duty often "forgot", but it was not a big deal. Their attitude - as long as the tapes are used up (they never test them or even check whether the backup actually ended), somehow & # 39 Recover from a disaster. When I find out that the actual tolerance to dig down deeply and complete the downtime of the system is less than 24 hours, I noticed that they need some help for these people It was.
Well, they decided to put the action on hold. They said that they are busy with other projects. Their disadvantages are that in less than three months the main burst of water will accumulate in the streets outside the building (those living in New York need to remember this - Lexington and the 3rd The west side of Avenue was closed by car 2 weeks from 39 weeks to 41 weeks). Their safety nets - their tapes - were now trapped in buildings that were deemed to be completely unsafe for Coned and fire station entries. For 6 days, the company could not access data, server, unsecured, without plans. Needless to say, they suffered - and it's pretty awful. The company is no longer doing business. You simply need to take the tape off site and know what to do when a disaster occurs.
Another sad incident emerges in mind - this time, a 25-year-old professional services company. They actually had a full disaster plan with off-site tape storage and a mirrored server in the president's house. However, when I saw them, I never actually did a full-scale test of the system. When the network administrator tested in the laboratory, the machine that was running Doubletake for Solomon, Exchange, File / Print, and BES was shipped to the owner's house and linked to an inexpensive Linksys & # 39; Compusa special & # 39; He remained in his area. A hub
I encouraged full-scale testing of the system and recommended to relocate the server to a generator backup facility hosted on 1/2 rack (about 700 dollars per month). When I heard that the owner's house was in that country, I heard that my IT administrator had never visited and was occasionally subject to blackouts. We also recommended full backup of the backup media and creation of a detailed recovery plan (it was planned to keep the key top 10 employees remotely on the CEO 's home server).
Well, the company decided not to use cash. It was only in the suit hearts anyway that NetAdmin opted to maintain the existing solution that I had told me. How he was right! Approximately six months later, when the floor just above the server room encountered a broken water pipe that soaked in the server room (this is the sole cause of the disaster seen in the past 5 years) I took out the server rack, telephone system, UPS system, and room AC.
They were able to find it within two years of establishment because of disaster recovery, CEO changed Internet provider and the static IP address they set changed. So their plan was DOA - nobody remoting anywhere. Since home IP address changed, Doubletake was not successfully replicating in more than 10 months (network administrator later warned and failed to duplicate - only they will never replicate) It was not set up). In addition, the girl who brought her backup tape home every day reported that she was sick on that day, so there was a 1/2 day delay to deliver the tape to her. Finally, when they were sent to their house in West Chester County (two days later, they got a new static IP address), the home tape drive was dead.
So they got a new tape on a different day and patched the server to the current specification. Five days after the flood, data came to flow eventually (Terminal service was not set up properly, of course, the home firewall was not correctly configured and about 3 people at low speed upload speed Simultaneous users at one time in Solomon). The comedy of this error was not over when the company was out of business, but it ended in pain for them. Since I last went nearly 30% of my work was gone (they truly contracted for my service!
The morality of this story is simple. Disaster recovery and business continuity can be done by any company that requires a computer system to do business.
