Be it coincidence or fate, it’s uncanny to have watched Skyfall (the 2012 Bond film) AND be asked to share thoughts on disaster recovery in recent days. Skyfall, a movie designed to engage and entertain with an overly dramatic plot, brings to light so many events that should not be dismissed as real-life scenarios.
If you recall, the movie plot involved stolen information about MI6 agents around the world and a brute force attack on MI6 - compromising its secrets, employee base, and physical headquarters. MI6... a large-scale, “sophisticated” organization stored the real identities of secret agents in a physical hard drive… and lost it.
Really?!? I suspect you don’t need to work in the cloud computing industry to have that bother you or have a palm-to-forehead moment. But regardless of how established an organization is, anything can happen to anyone.
Security is top-of-mind for virtually every organization, and really, so should business continuity with the help of disaster recovery planning. Many businesses, large and small, have been hit with ‘attacks’ or ‘disasters’ in recent years critically affecting operations and customers. So where does a disaster recovery plan fall in your list of priorities?
If you do not yet have one, here are some real-life examples that may prompt you to start thinking. Our guide at the end of this post also provides some helpful considerations to jumpstart your disaster recovery planning.
Common Disasters
1. Cyber attacks
Even companies selling security solutions can be vulnerable. In 2011, RSA Security employees were allegedly targeted by hacker groups with phishing scams. It’s still unclear the type of information that was stolen but regardless, the attack proved how important security training, controls, and processes are in preventing damage to a company’s brand and reputation.
Security training, processes, controls, a disaster recovery strategy, and even the right IT infrastructure could help minimize the impact of a cyber-attack, decrease a company’s vulnerability to one, or better control who can access what, where, and when.
2. Weather systems and natural disasters
It’s not just earthquakes and hurricanes that stall business. Wind storms can be worse culprits of power outages. Quest, a technology management company that sells disaster recovery and business continuity services, was affected by one. Only this time, the company had disaster recovery plans in place which enabled them to get back up and running the same day. As interviewed by Enterprise Features, frequent disaster recovery drills and testing of plans quarterly was fundamental.
Many automotive companies like Toyota and Nissan were greatly affected by the 2011 earthquake in Japan - stalling operations and exposing vulnerabilities in their supply chain. Both companies have since taken measures to develop a system closely identifying locations of their suppliers, how they may be disrupted during emergencies, and how they can diversify their sourcing according to this Fortune.com article.
3. Human error
An article by Cloudscene stated that human error is to blame for 22% of unplanned data center outages. It went on to describe a catastrophic shut down of two British Airways data centers somehow caused by a lone engineer disconnecting and re-connecting a power supply. Other studies online state that human error has caused an even higher percentage of outages, but needless to say, the right processes and controls need to be in place to take care of facilities protecting sensitive information. As well, constant evaluation and testing is vital to safeguarding IT infrastructure. Costs from such damage are not isolated to repairing the data centers, but also in compensation to customers affected.
More scenarios can cause organizational failures - poor internal communication, leaving a password on a post-it note stuck to a monitor, or the accidental hit of a data center switch by cleaning staff. How an organization handles disasters and failures can often be interpreted as the amount of care and respect they have for customers and employees who put their trust in its brand, services, products, and ability to protect personal info.
So if you need a starting point for internal discussions or even want to learn more about disaster recovery planning, our guide shares info on 6 considerations specific to virtual desktops to get you started, or watch this informative Disaster Recovery webinar:
Main image is Ben Wishaw and Daniel Craig in a scene from Skyfall (it's actually quite good).
