Which management practice focuses on availability and performance of services in case of a disaster

If you don’t have service continuity management and something major happens, it could ruin your business and – clearly – it’s something you will regret not thinking through.

Inhaltsverzeichnis Show

Service continuity management and the ITIL 4 value chain
What is a disaster recovery plan (DRP)?
Recovery plan considerations
Types of disaster recovery plans
Scope and objectives of DR planning
How to build a disaster recovery plan
Disaster recovery plan template
Testing your disaster recovery plan
Incident management plan vs. disaster recovery plan
Which management Practice ensures that the availability and performance of a service is maintained at a sufficient level in the event of a disaster?
Which management practice focuses on availability and performance?
What is general management practices?
What is ITIL service Management practices?

Developing resilience and an effective response at a time of disaster means you are safeguarding stakeholder interests, protecting business reputation and your value-creating activities.

You might think it obvious that IT teams would ensure availability and performance of a service in case of a disaster. However, many IT people are more focused on putting out daily “fires”. Or, if they have put together a continuity plan, how often have they gone back to it?

So, what are the five important factors IT organizations should be thinking about to prepare? ITIL 4’s service continuity management guidance lays out the approach:

What are central services you need to keep up and running? In hospitality, for example, this could be the ability to charge customers and be paid.
What is your continuity of operations plan for different scenarios such as network outages, natural disasters – from hurricanes to pandemics? If employees can’t access IT in the workplace, what then?
What are the core functions you need and where is the infrastructure (with cloud computing, a server isn’t on site which gives you more chance to gain access)? Do you need a secondary help desk or a “call tree” for distributing calls to service desks in other locations?
Do you have elasticity if there is an anomaly in demand? For example, people in the USA currently filing for re-employment assistance created a demand large enough to crash certain websites. Having cloud-based services gives you the ability to scale when demand increases.
Have you devised a service continuity plan and when was the last time you tested to see if it works? Test this a couple of times per year to be sure. Recognize there are things you can’t plan for, though you want to limit this level of risk and limit how much of the “aeroplane” you need to build while it’s “in the air”.

Service continuity management and the ITIL 4 value chain

For the plan value chain activity as outlined in ITIL 4, service continuity management’s contribution begins with putting a plan in writing, reviewing it and dissecting it.

This is about shaping an approach: understanding what a plan might look like and then identifying what you haven’t thought about.

IT teams have to force themselves to plan for the “what ifs”. If they claim to be too busy to plan for what might happen, this is storing up trouble.

Organizations need to be prepared to keep IT services going in the event of a disaster and understand how long they can operate under new and difficult circumstances. This needs tough questions, inevitably tough answers and being transparent to people across the business.

What is a disaster recovery plan (DRP)?

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a documented, structured approach that describes how an organization can quickly resume work after an unplanned incident. A DRP is an essential part of a business continuity plan (BCP). It is applied to the aspects of an organization that depend on a functioning information technology (IT) infrastructure. A DRP aims to help an organization resolve data loss and recover system functionality so that it can perform in the aftermath of an incident, even if it operates at a minimal level.

The plan consists of steps to minimize the effects of a disaster so the organization can continue to operate or quickly resume mission-critical functions. Typically, a DRP involves an analysis of business processes and continuity needs. Before generating a detailed plan, an organization often performs a business impact analysis (BIA) and risk analysis (RA), and it establishes recovery objectives.

As cybercrime and security breaches become more sophisticated, it is important for an organization to define its data recovery and protection strategies. The ability to quickly handle incidents can reduce downtime and minimize financial and reputational damages. DRPs also help organizations meet compliance requirements, while providing a clear roadmap to recovery.

Some types of disasters that organizations can plan for include the following:

application failure
communication failure
power outage
natural disaster
malware or other cyber attack
data center disaster
building disaster
campus disaster
citywide disaster
regional disaster
national disaster
multinational disaster

Recovery plan considerations

When disaster strikes, the recovery strategy should start at the business level to determine which applications are most important to running the organization. The recovery time objective (RTO) describes the amount of time critical applications can be down, typically measured in hours, minutes or seconds. The recovery point objective (RPO) describes the age of files that must be recovered from data backup storage for normal operations to resume.

Recovery strategies define an organization's plans for responding to an incident, while disaster recovery plans describe how the organization should respond. Recovery plans are derived from recovery strategies.

Know the seven important elements to include in a disaster recovery plan.

In determining a recovery strategy, organizations should consider such issues as the following:

budget
insurance coverage
resources -- people and physical facilities
management team's position on risks
technology
data and data storage
suppliers
compliance requirements

Management approval of recovery strategies is important. All strategies should align with the organization's goals. Once DR strategies have been developed and approved, they can be translated into disaster recovery plans.

Types of disaster recovery plans

DRPs can be tailored for a given environment. Some specific types of plans include the following:

Virtualized disaster recovery plan. Virtualization provides opportunities to implement DR in a more efficient and simpler way. A virtualized environment can spin up new virtual machine instances within minutes and provide application recovery through high availability. Testing is also easier, but the plan must validate that applications can be run in DR mode and returned to normal operations within the RPO and RTO.
Network disaster recovery plan. Developing a plan for recovering a network gets more complicated as the complexity of the network increases. It is important to provide a detailed, step-by-step recovery procedure; test it properly; and keep it updated. The plan should include information specific to the network, such as in its performance and networking staff.
Cloud disaster recovery plan. Cloud DR can range from file backup procedures in the cloud to a complete replication. Cloud DR can be space-, time- and cost-efficient, but maintaining the disaster recovery plan requires proper management. The manager must know the location of physical and virtual servers. The plan must address security, which is a common issue in the cloud that can be alleviated through testing.
Data center disaster recovery plan. This type of plan focuses exclusively on the data center facility and infrastructure. An operational risk assessment is a key part of a data center DRP. It analyzes key components, such as building location, power systems and protection, security and office space. The plan must address a broad range of possible scenarios.

Scope and objectives of DR planning

The main objective of a DRP is to minimize negative effects of an incident on business operations. A disaster recovery plan can range in scope from basic to comprehensive. Some DRPs can be as much as 100 pages long.

DR budgets vary greatly and fluctuate over time. Organizations can take advantage of free resources, such as online DRP templates, like the SearchDisasterRecovery template below.

Several organizations, such as the Business Continuity Institute and Disaster Recovery Institute International, also provide free information and online content how-to articles.

An IT disaster recovery plan checklist typically includes the following:

critical systems and networks it covers;
staff members responsible for those systems and networks;
RTO and RPO information;
steps to restart, reconfigure, and recover systems and networks; and
other emergency steps required in the event of an unforeseen incident.

The location of a disaster recovery site should be carefully considered in a DRP. Distance is an important, but often overlooked, element of the DRP process. An off-site location that is close to the primary data center may seem ideal -- in terms of cost, convenience, bandwidth and testing. However, outages differ greatly in scope. A severe regional event can destroy the primary data center and its DR site if the two are located too close together.

Disaster recovery planning works with business continuity planning to make up the entire BCDR process.

How to build a disaster recovery plan

The disaster recovery plan process involves more than simply writing the document. Before writing the DRP, a risk analysis and business impact analysis can help determine where to focus resources in the disaster recovery process.

The BIA identifies the impacts of disruptive events and is the starting point for identifying risk within the context of DR. It also generates the RTO and RPO. The RA identifies threats and vulnerabilities that could disrupt the operation of systems and processes highlighted in the BIA.

The RA assesses the likelihood of a disruptive event and outlines its potential severity.

A DRP checklist should include the following steps:

establishing the range or extent of necessary treatment and activity -- the scope of recovery;
gathering relevant network infrastructure documents;
identifying the most serious threats and vulnerabilities, as well as the most critical assets;
reviewing the history of unplanned incidents and outages, as well as how they were handled;
identifying the current disaster recovery procedures and DR strategies;
identifying the incident response team;
having management review and approve the DRP;
testing the plan;
updating the plan; and
implementing a DRP or BCP audit.

Disaster recovery plans are living documents. Involving employees -- from management to entry-level -- increases the value of the plan.

Another component of the DRP is the communication plan. This strategy should detail how both internal and external crisis communication will be handled. Internal communication includes alerts that can be sent using email, overhead building paging systems, voice messages and text messages to mobile devices. Examples of internal communication include instructions to evacuate the building and meet at designated places, updates on the progress of the situation and notices when it's safe to return to the building.

External communications are even more essential to the BCP and include instructions on how to notify family members in the case of injury or death; how to inform and update key clients and stakeholders on the status of the disaster; and how to discuss disasters with the media.

Disaster recovery plan template

An organization can begin its DRP with a summary of vital action steps and a list of important contact information. That makes the most essential information quickly and easily accessible.

The plan should define the roles and responsibilities of disaster recovery team members and outline the criteria to launch the plan into action. The plan should specify, in detail, the incident response and recovery activities.

Other important elements of a disaster recovery plan template include the following:

a statement of intent and a DR policy statement;
plan goals;
authentication tools, such as passwords;
geographical risks and factors;
tips for dealing with media;
financial and legal information and action steps; and
a plan history.

Testing your disaster recovery plan

DRPs are substantiated through testing to identify deficiencies and provide opportunities to fix problems before a disaster occurs. Testing can offer proof that the emergency response plan is effective and hits RPOs and RTOs. Since IT systems and technologies are constantly changing, DR testing also helps ensure a disaster recovery plan is up to date.

Reasons given for not testing DRPs include budget restrictions, resource constraints and a lack of management approval. DR testing takes time, resources and planning. It can also be risky if the test involves using live data.

DR testing varies in complexity. In a plan review, a detailed discussion of the DRP looks for missing elements and inconsistencies. In a tabletop test, participants walk through plan activities step by step to demonstrate whether DR team members know their duties in an emergency. A simulation test uses resources such as recovery sites and backup systems in what is essentially a full-scale test without an actual failover.

Incident management plan vs. disaster recovery plan

An incident management plan (IMP) -- or incident response plan -- should also be incorporated into the DRP; together, the two create a comprehensive data protection strategy. The goal of both plans is to minimize the impact of an unexpected incident, recover from it and return the organization to its normal production levels as fast as possible. However, IMPs and DRPs are not the same.

The major difference between an incident management plan and a disaster recovery plan is their primary objectives. An IMP focuses on protecting sensitive data during an event and defines the scope of actions to be taken during the incident, including the specific roles and responsibilities of the incident response team.

In contrast, a DRP focuses on defining the recovery objectives and the steps that must be taken to bring the organization back to an operational state after an incident occurs.

Learn what it takes to develop a disaster recovery plan that considers the cloud and cloud services.

Which management Practice ensures that the availability and performance of a service is maintained at a sufficient level in the event of a disaster?

— The purpose of the service continuity management practice is to ensure that the availability and performance of a service is maintained at a sufficient level in the event of a disaster.

Which management practice focuses on availability and performance?

Service continuity management This practice provides a framework for building organisational resilience. It helps organisations protect services in the event of a disruptive incident and ensure that their availability and performance remain at a sufficient level.

What is general management practices?

General management practices: Practices that are applicable across the organization for the success of the business and the services provided by the organization.

What is ITIL service Management practices?

In ITIL, a management practice is a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective. Previous ITIL versions focus on processes.