The document discusses the importance of disaster recovery planning for businesses. It notes that a lack of planning can be devastating, with 43% of businesses that experience a disaster without a plan never reopening and only 29% still operating after two years. The document provides statistics on costs of downtime and data loss for businesses. It emphasizes the need to have backup systems and an actionable recovery plan in place, along with regularly testing backups and plans. The document offers guidance on developing backup and disaster recovery plans tailored to business needs.

1. IMAGINE….
…if you were one of
these businesses in New
Orleans, after Hurricane
Katrina
11/3/2011
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2. Even closer to home…
Springfield MA
June 1, 2011 tornado
11/3/2011
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3. STOP FLIRTING WITH DISASTER!
BE PREPARED.
Sameer Sule
Business Technology Consultant
KINARA | INSIGHTS

4. Objectives

Understand the importance of having a disaster
recovery plan for a business as relates to its
computer systems, applications and data.

Reduce Business Downtime-Technologies currently
available to SMBs
11/3/2011
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5. 2011: Year of Disasters in Massachusetts

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October 29th Snowstorm: More than 600,000
people without power. Outage likely to last a few
days.
Springfield Tornado : June 1, 2011
Hurricane Irene: > 500,000 people lost power.
Some for as long as a week.
Earthquake
January blizzard
Millions in damages and lost business
11/3/2011
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6. October 29th Snow Storm
According to National Grid:
 671,594 customers or 28 percent of the state’s 2.4
million electric customers lost power
 By late Oct 31st, 459,809 customers were still
without power
 Harvard :100 percent were without power
 Wrentham: 93 percent in the dark
 Foxboro:91 percent powerless
 Andover: 74 percent unplugged
11/3/2011
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7. Eye Opener
“A Company that experiences a computer outage lasting
more than 10 days will never fully recover financially. 50
percent will be out of business within five years.”



70 percent of small firms that experience a major data loss go
out of business within a year.
Companies that aren’t able to resume operations within ten days
(of a disaster hit) are not likely to survive.
Of those businesses that experience a disaster and have no
emergency plan, 43 percent never reopen; of those that do
reopen, only 29 percent are still operating two years later.
SCORE: Counselors to America’s Small Businesses
11/3/2011
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8. More Eye Openers

15-40% businesses fail following a natural or man-made disaster*

35% SMBs have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan**

94% small business owners believe a disaster could seriously
disrupt their business within the next two years***

51% Americans have experienced at least one emergency
situation involving lost utilities for at least 3 days, evacuation from
their home or office, loss of communications with family members
or had to provide first aid to others****
*Insurance Information Institute, **Gartner, ***American Red Cross and FedEx Small Business
Survey, 2007, ****American Red Cross/Harris Poll Survey, 2009.
11/3/2011
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9. Most common business disruptive events

Power outage

Internet outage

Server crash

Viruses, hacks and breaches

Location based issues like building evacuation due to
fire, hazardous spill, burst pipes, theft etc
11/3/2011
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10. What is the actual cost in $$$$$$ to
your business if you were down for
a day?
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11. Median cost of downtime
Small business: $3000 per day
Medium size business: $23,000 per day
Symantec 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey - Global: January 2011
11/3/2011
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12. Real cost of business downtime


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Loss in labor
Loss in revenue
Loss in service
All are cascade effects. Total loss total is
larger than you think.
11/3/2011
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13. SMB Data on Disaster Preparedness

Despite warnings, most SMBs are still
not prepared for disaster
50% don’t have a BDR plan in place
41% never thought about putting a plan in place
Symantec 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey - Global: January 2011
11/3/2011
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14. SMB Data on Disaster Preparedness

SMBs are at risk
- 40% said disaster recovery is not a priority
- <50% of SMBs back up their data weekly or
more frequently
- 23% back up data daily
Symantec 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey - Global: January 2011
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

15. SMB Data on Disaster Preparedness

SMBs do not act until it is too late
- 50% of SMBs that implemented a BDR plan did
so after experiencing an outage and/or data loss
- 28% actually tested their recovery plan
Symantec 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey - Global: January 2011
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

16. Business Continuity Planning

Describes the processes and procedures an
organization puts in place to ensure that
essential functions can continue during and
after a disaster.
Seeks to prevent interruption of mission-critical services,
and to re-establish full functioning as swiftly and
smoothly as possible.
11/3/2011
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17. Disaster Recovery Planning

The processes, policies and procedures
related to preparing for recovery or
continuation of technology infrastructure
critical to an organization after a disruptive
event
Subset of business continuity that focuses on the IT or
technology systems that support business functions.
11/3/2011
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18. Assess your business risk


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What types of emergencies have you
experienced in in the past?
What could result from a process or system
failure?
What threats does your business location have?
Will you be affected if your neighbor is hit by a
disaster?
11/3/2011
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19. BDR: Common SMB Mistakes
Lack of:
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A formal written BDR plan
Offsite data protection
Policy on data retention
Testing of restores/DR plan on a regular basis
Ensuring critical data protection
Focus on recovery
Designated accountable BDR person
11/3/2011
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20. Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR)
Planning

Backup
Backup with no recovery planning is pointless

Disaster Recovery
Recovery without backup is impossible
11/3/2011
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21. Backup

What should be backed up?

What type of backup?

What is the backup frequency?
11/3/2011
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22. Backup

Build multiple layers of backup for greater
reliability and faster restores

Local RAID based backup, off-site tapes, or
cloud based storage

Technology deployed should meet your data
backup and recovery needs
11/3/2011
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23. Backup: Points to consider

How long can your business run without critical data
available to your employees, clients, partners etc?

What data is extremely important in order to get back
up and running after an unforeseen disruptive event?

What type of backup solution (local/ offsite cloud
based) do you need to address your needs?

What level of data backup (files, whole image) do you
need and what is the backup frequency?

Which desktops/laptops/mobile devices need to be
backed up?
11/3/2011
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24. Disaster Recovery

No Plan= No recovery

Disaster Recovery without proper planning is
a recipe for disaster
11/3/2011
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25. Recovery Planning

During the recovery process, what is the
order in which systems, applications and data
will be brought back on line?

How are your employees going to access the
applications and data in the event that the
regular work location cannot be accessed?
11/3/2011
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26. RTO and RPO
RTO (Recovery Time Objective)
The maximum tolerable duration of time that a computer system, network or application
can be down after a failure or the length of time it takes to restore the system.
RPO
Disaster occurrence
R
T
O
time
RPO (Recovery Point Objective)
Is the age of files or state of data that must be recovered from backup storage for
normal operations to resume if a computer system, network or application goes down.
The RPO is expressed backward in time (that is, into the past) from the instant at which
the failure occurs,
11/3/2011
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27. Cloud Based BDR Systems

Automatic backup

Secure and offsite

Easy to access and restore

Faster recovery

Reduced downtime

Competitive pricing
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

28. Virtualization and Reduced Downtime
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Backup image of physical server to the cloud
Can launch a virtual machine in the cloud
Allows technicians to fix the physical server
while regular business is run from the virtual
server
Allows server migrations to be carried out in the
cloud
Test upgrades/patches in cloud before
production deployment
11/3/2011
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29. BDR Solutions


Turnkey solutions: for a monthly fee providing
everything from power, technology, mobile
offices and connectivity
Software providers: cloud based BDR solutions,
each with its own value proposition
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

30. What to expect from your BDR vendor

Experience with required federal and state compliance
and regulatory requirements for your industry

Strong encryption methods

RTOs and RPOs planning with skilled engineers

Redundancy of data over 2 geographically dispersed
data centers
11/3/2011
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31. What to expect..continued

Designated point of contact (engineer) who knows your
BDR plan and can monitor and respond immediately to
any emergencies

Vendor technology should be scalable and flexible to
your company needs

Service and support

References
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

32. Prevention is always better than cure

Be Proactive

Use Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM)
services to ensure that your server and workstations are
running properly, updated, backed up daily, and
protected from viruses with latest definitions

Keep inventory of all your IT systems up-to-date

Keep system passwords and contact info of important
personnel readily available in case of emergency
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

33. BDR Plan: Bare minimum

Designate a BDR person/team

Details of your computing environment: description of
what you own, its location, date purchased, warranty
information, number of licenses

Contact info for your hardware and software
vendors

User names and Passwords for critical systems

Different channels of communication: phone, email, text,
social media
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

34. Real World Examples
River Valley Community Federal CU: Camden, Arkansas
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During initial test of recovery plan, they collected all
critical info, such as technical information for server
configuration, data recovery steps, setup information,
etc.
Found that simple phone numbers for key contacts at
data backup locations were missing
Updated their printed plan and online repository of key
contact data
Small Business Administration
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

35. Real World Examples

A Desaur & Co. ( accounting company) was using a
tape-based solution when the server failure occurred in
April 2007. The tape restore failed entirely because its IT
support company had not carried out trial data restores,
which would have revealed that the backups were not
working. After an expensive and time costly hard disk
data restore, only 80% of the data was able to be
restored. Permanently lost valuable data.

Now employ a cloud based backup and recovery
software, which also backs up laptops when connected
to the network and can immediately begin remotely
restoring all of the data to the systems if the server fails.
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

36. Real World Examples
400‐Person Call Center: Nashville, Tennessee

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Building located in floodplain, extensive planning was
made to help alleviate risk
Took steps to elevate IT equipment storage, establish
redundant facilities, and institute a fail-safe phone
system.
During 2010 Nashville floods, entire facility was lost
Chose to recover locally in mobile offices rather than lay
off or transfer employees
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

37. BDR



PLAN IT
IMPLEMENT IT
TEST IT REGULARLY
DON’T LEAVE YOUR BUSINESS
TO CHANCE!!
11/3/2011
www.kinarainsights.com

38. THANK YOU
CONTACT
Sameer Sule
Healthcare Technology Consultant
Author: “Protecting Electronic Health Information: A Practical Approach
to Patient Data Security in Your Healthcare Practice”
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/author/sameersule
Blog: http://www.kinarainsights.com/blog.html
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sameer-sule/7/b1b/511
Twitter:@sameersule
10/1/2013
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