The hurricane has prompted businesses on both sides of the Atlantic to consider dealing with unforeseen risks.
Data centre service providers in the US have been working overtime to prepare their customers for both the short and long term impacts of Superstorm Sandy.
The recent storms have resulted in the malfunction of a number of high profile websites and systems. The combination of events has brought about power cuts and problems with communications links and backup systems (such as generators) as some of these have been water-logged.
Companies are being urged to have both a business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) plans in place in preparation for potential disasters. According to Rik Williams, Head of Data Centre Operations at Node4, businesses should seriously consider risk assessment, risk mitigation and contingency planning:
"Although storm conditions like this are rare, especially in the UK, there are always risks that a site storing your IT systems may become unavailable for various reasons. Two plans should be put in place to prepare for unforeseen risks: a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan. However, it must be noted that business continuity and disaster recovery are slightly different.
"Disaster recovery is about getting your business back up and running after a large-scale disaster. This could involve rebuilding systems, restoring backed-up data, finding new premises and so on and so forth. The business continuity plan should outline how your business and its systems will continue to operate in the event of the occurrence of various risk scenarios. It must be noted that not all scenarios will be IT-related. With many companies hugely reliant on their IT systems, having a robust plan in place (and testing that plan) makes sense."
The assets that companies are trying to protect need to be assessed and then the risks that apply to those assets need to be considered.
"Simply putting your IT equipment in a data centre mitigates a lot of risk. Security is also very important," Williams continued. "Having diverse connections to the internet with multiple providers and splitting your systems across two or more sites means that risk is reduced."
Related news items:
Newer news items:
Older news items:
zurich classic selena lamichael james lamichael james derrick rose acl earthquake los angeles
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন