Testing the disaster recovery plan

Abstract

Organizations need to have undertaken an analysis of business risk and to have formulated a recovery plan. However, only a small number of businesses have made any attempt to minimize their risks and even fewer have a recovery plan which has been tested. Most are a token gesture to auditors. An out‐of‐date, untested plan can often be more dangerous than not having a plan at all as it lulls the organization into a false sense of security. But how do you test plans? If the strategy is to use a computer‐processing facility in another place – perhaps a commercial hot and cold site – the costs of regular testing can be high and the disruption to the business great. In tight economic times, senior management is too often prepared to gamble with the organization′s future. Develops a testing methodology, based on many years of designing plans and hands‐on testing, which reduces costs by breaking down the test procedure into components, modules and full tests.