Maintenance and Updates

Your DR & BC plans are living documents that grow and change as your business grows and changes. Some of the common problems with Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans are:

•Plans not up to date

•Communications

•Risk Event not identified

Maintenance (Keep your plans up to date)

DRP & BCP priorities can change as equipment, weather, or personal changes.

Risk Numbers: The planners must be aware of new and replaced equipment and have the new equipment added, replaced equipment removed and the risk numbers updated appropriately. This is where good communications with your vendors, purchasing, HR, and IT become very important. Your plans may not work if your inventory, vendor, or personal list is not current.

Risk Events: We recommend that these events be updated every 3 months or sooner. "Risk Number" should be updated for events that could happen (or not) in the next 3 months. The DR plans for the higher risk numbers should be reviewed to make sure they still meet the your continuity and disaster recovery rules.

There should also be a generic Disaster Recovery Plan if an event happens that is not identified in any of the DR plans.

Other Maintenance: A routine schedule should be in place to regularly change passwords and test backup recovery.

Updates (Keep personnel trained with the plans)

Even if the plans have not been updated, some plans should be rehearsed on a regular schedule to be sure that the new employees have experience in carrying them out.

Make sure the proper employees have the updated passwords and lists.

If the DR or BC plans have been updated, the new plans must be printed and passed out to the personnel in charge. New plans mean new testing and then Implementing. So back we go to part 4 "Validating and Implementing the Plans" and start over.

Disaster & Continuity Planning is a Closed Loop Lifecycle

Analysing, Writing, Testing, Implementing, and Maintenance that is the never ending job of the DR & BC planners. Which brings us to the last section Part 6 "Common Sense"

Caveat: This guide is very basic and is designed more for the IT department. We know that every business is different. Use this document as a starting point to help create your own plans for the types of disasters that could happen to your business.

We look forward to comments and suggestions.