Top Ten Tips for 2009 Hurricane Season Planning from SunGard Availability Services

Top Ten Tips for 2009 Hurricane Season Planning from SunGard Availability Services

Steps Outline How to Stay on Top of Disaster Recovery Plans WAYNE, Pa., June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- With the onset of the 2009 hurricane season, SunGard Availability Serviceshas outlined its top ten tips for disaster preparedness. By following these steps, organizations will be better prepared to keep their systems, processes and people up and running during and after a major storm. "Today, many organizations are focused on short-term pressures to reduce spending, and because of this, may not be properly testing their recovery plans," said Robert DiLossi, director of crisis management at SunGard Availability Services. "We have seen all too often organizations neglect key elements of their information availability programs only to realize the grave consequences when it's too late. As hurricane season approaches, it is imperative that companies reexamine and re-test existing plans, making sure they align with the current state of the business - from both IT and business process perspectives - in case a major storm should occur. For those organizations facing travel restrictions due to budget constraints, new modes of testing - such as remote or virtualized testing - provide cost-effective alternatives to more traditional methods." SunGard Availability Services recommends companies follow these proactive steps to help ensure readiness for the 2009 hurricane season: Regularly test your disaster recovery plan. Simply having a plan in place is not enough. Develop andregularly test your crisis communication plan so that the first time it is executed is not during an emergency. Remember to test under realistic conditions and make the plan robust enough to address extended recovery that may require utilization of new facilities, relocation of staff and involvement of outside personnel. Revisit and reassign responsibilities. Factor in changes to your organization caused by recent layoffs and restructurings. Assign new responsibilities to employees based on the current organizational structure and available resources. Test this updated plan to ensure all tools and protocols are in place to operate during a disaster, reaching out to all parts of the organization and employee family members as well as vendors, government agencies and emergency responders. Make sure your notification system is up-to-date. Critical during any potential interruption, notification should be an integral part of an organization's disaster recovery plan. Make sure all contact numbers are up-to-date, allowing the organization to get in touch with key personnel in the event of an emergency. This will also help prioritize methods of communication and track which employees have received messages. Put your people first. Employees are the heart of an organization; however, many human resources aspects are frequently overlooked in disaster recovery planning. Businesses must identify alternate locations where employees can go in the event a primary work location is unavailable and address the physical safety and psychological well-being of employees. Assign backup roles for the inevitable times when key players are not available or missing, and time-sensitive actions need to be taken. Employ cross training to have alternative contacts ready to go. Don't wait to relocate. If an organization has access to hot or cold back-up sites, a common mistake is to wait too long before declaring an emergency and relocating personnel. If an organization is located in an area for which a government evacuation order has been issued, it should declare and relocate immediately. Don't forget about your technology. Develop procedures for technical recovery scripts that will be deployed to help get your IT infrastructure up and running. Make the scripts comprehensive and easy to understand so people who are not familiar with them can easily follow along. Keep your vendor list current. Strictly enforce change management and control processes to help ensure vendor contacts are current so vital services will be quickly available when needed. Consider the impact outside of your organization. In the event of a disaster, will your vendors be able to perform their roles in supporting your critical technical infrastructure and business processes? Consider looking at secondary providers as a precaution. Take time to evaluate whether support or maintenance contracts need to be extended or have levels of support modified. Evaluate readiness and completeness of offsite data storage. Paper records and backup tapes may be totally lost, destroyed or unavailable. Develop contingencies in the event delivery of offsite-stored data is delayed. Investigate using electronic media - through disk to disk backup - to help safeguard and provide backup information. Take the guesswork out of server recovery. Should a disaster occur, re-building servers from the ground up consumes time and stretches internal IT resources. Consider working with a third-party provider that can simplify these processes by rebuilding your operating systems on its own servers - enabling a speedy and more cost-effective recovery. "Just because hurricane season has begun does not mean there isn't time to prepare," said Mr. DiLossi. "Organizations often get overwhelmed by disaster recovery planning but in the short-term they can take the first steps of updating notification systems, coordinating with outside vendors/agencies and testing current plans. It cannot be said enough times - test the way you recover, recover the way you test." SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery process expertise and automation combined with an enterprise-class IT infrastructure - a protocol-independent network, hardened facilities and redundant power systems. In addition, the company has a 100 percent success rate helping customers to recover in its 30-year history.