IT Disaster Recovery Plan Examples

IT disaster recovery plan examples are fairly easy to find as well. Be careful to remember what it is that you are looking for and how you will use it. No two organizations are identical and although you can get a good idea on the things to consider, you must apply it to your organization!

IT disaster recovery plan examples - outline

Initiation

Roles and responsibilities for planning, plan approval, and quality assurance

List of services confirmed as vital

Strategy and schedule for planning

Contingency planning processes and protocols

• Progress reporting
• Plan review
• Plan approval
• Issue resolution process
• Communication and coordination strategy with relevant intra and inter-agency organizations (including local government and community organizations)

Business Impact Analysis (Risks)

Minimum Acceptable Levels of Service (remember to include the individual Vital Business function of each Service)

• List (or matrix) of service dependencies
• List of service interfaces
• Commitments to other organizations (specific services and service levels)
• Minimum acceptable levels of service and/or output which could be tolerated under extraneous circumstances
• List (or matrix) of components critical to support minimum levels of service
• Executive approval for minimum acceptable service levels

Failure scenarios (potential risks)

• Window of vulnerability (time period during which the service may be at risk)
• Assessment of internal remediation effort status and likelihood to be complete on time
• Assessment of reliance on, and condition of external services, suppliers and dependencies (confidence in continued availability of resource)
• Potential failure scenarios with likelihood of occurrence

Impact of each failure scenario on vital business services with likelihood of occurrence

• List or matrix of impact of each scenario on vital business services with likelihood of occurrence

Services for which contingency plans will be developed

• List of services and the scope of contingency required (specific components or systems supporting the service that require contingencies)
• Executive approval of contingency scope

Contingency Planning

Contingency strategies

• List of services, components (if applicable), considered contingencies which support them and the benefit of the contingency
• Considered contingencies and required resources
• Assessment of considered contingencies
• Executive approval for contingency strategies

Detailed contingency plans (for each contingency)

• Contingency objective and scope
• Contingency triggers
• Schedule for preparation and deployment of contingency
• Monitoring strategies to ensure identification of triggering events
• Roles and responsibilities for contingency preparation and deployment (including updated contacts, contact mechanism and numbers)
• Status reporting processes and protocols
• Instructions to carry out contingency
• Coordination strategy with local and regional organizations (if applicable)
• Required resources and estimated costs
• Agreements and assumptions with suppliers on whom each contingency is dependent
• Communications strategy
• Business resumption strategy
• Validation/testing strategy for contingencies and business resumption
• Validation/testing plans
• Validation/testing results (Assessment of capability of contingencies and business resumption)

This is not meant to be a complete example, but a thought provoker!