What's Missing In Your DRP?

In most disaster recovery plans there is one flaw that goes by unseen by many. Let’s do a quick review of a simple disaster recovery plan or DRP. 

• Data recovery in place and tested – check, 
• Insurance updated – check, 
• Fire suppression inspected – check, 
• Furniture vendors lined up – check, 
• Perimeter security ready – check, 
• Internet and telco failovers in place and tested – check, 
• Poly Tarps to cover breaches and protect things inside – check, 
• Power generation tested and ready – check, 
• Computer replacements on hand or easy to obtain – check, 
• Cloud based paperless office in place for mission critical documents – check, 
• Co-Location ready – check, 
• Check, check, check and check. 

 So what is the one thing that is often over looked by so many? Refuse removal.

 

As an example it is no secret that the Florida Keys was hit with a devastating storm when Irma bulldozed through in September 2017. Many homes, boats and businesses were flattened into nothing but wreckage. A lot of that wreckage still remains over four months later in piles on properties, along the sides of streets and in canals and is just sitting there. It has been a frustrating ordeal for the citizens of the Keys as Monroe County and FEMA have seemingly dropped the ball in removal. Hence is the great fail, people often are reliant on government agencies to come in and clean things up. 

Instead of relying on the government for emergency refuse removal your DRP needs to have provisions in how to remove and safely dispose of any debris on your site regardless if the debris was generated by your building or from someone else’s. Generally you would need to hire a contractor to take care of this task for you unless you want to take care of the it yourself. But regardless any debris must be brought to and properly disposed of in an authorized landfill or recycling center. Regardless if you hire someone to remove and dispose of the debris or you do it yourself you could be ultimately responsible for the final disposition. 

Here comes another aspect, some of the debris may need to be separated for recycling and that might be an important part of your DRP. Items can include various metals, plastics, glass along with normal debris, not to mention potential contaminates. These can include propane cylinders and tanks, gasoline cans, paints, lubricants and other chemicals. And let’s not talk about untreated sewage which brings about it’s own health risks. For those potentially hazardous items you will need to follow proper collection and disposal procedures to the letter. 

In some areas you may be allowed to simply burn the debris but with the todays pollution laws you could wind up getting hit with a serious fine from the EPA, fire department or police department. So before striking that match check to see if you are allowed to do so. 

By not cleaning up and properly disposing of debris cannot only hinder successful recovery of your business or home but can cause a potential health risk. So no DRP can or should be considered complete unless refuse removal is included in it regardless if you own a business or not. 

Photos:
Dawn Kozash
Kimberly Beier-Brown

Paperless Office for Disaster Recovery

A paperless office solution not only can reduce the amount of paper that you print, see my article on “The Cost of Printing”, but can be part of your Disaster Recovery Plan or “DRP.”

In my mentioned article instead of printing your documents onto paper you create them as a PDF files and save them that way.  We have all read things on our computers that are PDF’s so we are familiar with it already.  The big difference is that now we create the PDF’s for reading.

Imagine the destruction of your critical
documents

In the event of a disaster where your building is inaccessible, damaged or destroyed all of your paper documents will become useless.  As you can imagine that alone can put you out of business.  By making your printouts as electronic documents and placing them onto a secure hosted location on the internet can help bring your business back from a disaster quickly.  All you need to do is access your electronic documents any time, any place.

Not only can you add PDF’s into a paperless office, you can include spreadsheets, word processing documents, AutoCad drawings, photographs and graphics and more.  Adding physical paper to the paperless office is as simple as scanning them into the solution.  Most copiers today have scanning capabilities built into them already that allow you to scan to a location on a server or PC.

By being very diligent in creating and storing your documents electronically, especially mission critical ones  the destruction of your building will become more of an inconvenience than anything else.  OK, granted it would be a major inconvenience but at least you potentially would not be out of business.

With these hosted paperless office solutions you can customize them to fit your business structure including who can access what document.  As an example you certainly would not want a routine clerk having access to payroll information so various levels of security can be set up.  You would need to check with the solution provider about setting this up.

Who can benefit from setting up a paperless office solution?  Everyone.  There is no business to small or too large that cannot benefit from some form of paperless office.  And you do not need to go insane and make everything paperless.

As a homeowner or renter you too can benefit from this as well.  All you need is a scanner which

You simply scan your documents into a computer
for safe storage and easy retrieval

generally comes with software that creates PDF files beside your computer.  From here you can scan all of your documents and save them onto a disk, generally a DVD.  All that needs to be done now is put the DVD into a safe location.  I would recommend a bank deposit vault if not that, a safe that you can buy from places like Staples, Home Depot, Lowes, Etc.  That is the simplest form of a paperless environment.  A true paperless office is actually a database.  In a later article I will go into that a bit more.

For the small mom-and-pop types of businesses can setup a system similar to that above.  As an example, take a bar located on Duval Street in Key West.  Some of the paper that could be included into a paperless office could include:

• Receipts from their vendors when they get deliveries
• Invoices
• Physical inventories sheets
• Deposit slips
• Insurance papers
• Copies of leases
• Correspondence
• Photographs
• Job applications
• In essence, anything on paper

Once scanned you can save them to a DVD and keep that in a safe place.  This way if something happens you will still have access to your records.  Even if you have to wait for the bank to open.

For larger companies they would most likely go with a hosted solution which is offsite for document storage instead of a bank vault.  But the way costs have come down, even the most modest of businesses can now afford one.

Granted this will not eliminate all of your paper but with proper use a paperless office solution can help save your business in the event of a disaster.  You just may even qualify for an insurance break for having a DRP and especially one with a paperless office solution.  But check with your broker.

If you are interested in setting up a paperless office solution for your business or home, feel free to contact me and I will be glad to help.

Redundant Internet Connections for DR

A lot of businesses today rely on the internet for commerce in one form or another.  Regardless it is email, on-line applications, research or ordering the internet is the life blood for many companies.  Losing that connectivity can potentially cost millions of dollars depending on the type of business.

Most companies will have only one internet connection, hence a single point of failure.  In order to prevent that it is wise to have a second internet connection from a different Internet Service Provider (“ISP”).

This is also prudent for disaster recovery should one ISP lose connectivity or a tree takes out lines on a pole

Loss of the internet can be frustrating

 

for some

.  Even a car or truck hitting a pole can take out your internet.

What a lot of people do not realize is even if you have a second ISP, the internet connection could potentially be supplied from the same Central Office (“CO”).  If the CO has problems then you could lose both connections.

Part of this is because most places use good old fashioned copper wires from the pole to the building to supply connectivity.  Regardless of what ISP you select, the very last mile, that is from the CO to your building runs along lines owned generally by the phone company.  And what now have is the single point of failure once again.

That is why when you select a secondary ISP, it pays to find out where their CO is located.

Some places will have cable connectivity like CableVision here on Long Island.  They use a totally different CO and they own the copper from along the whole stretch thereby taking the phone company out of the loop for one connection.

Other places could even have a fiberoptic connection which eliminates copper altogether and like the cable will originate from a different CO.  The fiber could also be from another provider which again takes phone company out of the loop.  Of course the phone company could have a different CO for the fiber so double check for they might even give you a discount in having multiple products.

Fiber Cable is made up strands
of special glass

With the way that fiber has come down in costs and the speeds far exceed what can be obtained on copper, it pays to look into having fiber as your primary connection and copper as your secondary connection.  This way if one should fail, you will still have the other to work from.

Generally how this is accomplished is that both connections are brought into the same room.  From there they are connected to the same firewall which is configured to accept both.  Most firewalls today will have a failover built into them so if your primary line goes down the secondary takes over instantly and seamlessly.  No one would ever know.  From the firewall the connection is now connected to the network where everyone works.

Internet Connection with
Dual connections

A lot of times the firewall will also do what is called ‘load balancing.’  That is split the traffic among both connections so one does not have a bottle neck.

Some companies will even go as far as having a third connection should they lose the first two.  This can also be copper of fiber from another provider.  Some places will use a broadband connection similar to cell phones using a device where 3G or 4G modems are connected to.  This is good in case a tree or accident takes down a pole outside.  Problem with that is the costs can be very high and you would not get the same amount throughput as you would with copper or fiber.  And like cell phones you might not get good reception.

Cradlepoint Router

A device that I used is known as for broadband connectivity is CradlePoint.  It takes up to three broadband modems connected to it by USB cables then to the firewall.  In testing I pulled both the primary and secondary internet connections and just left the CradlePoint connected.  No one in the office of 55 ever knew the difference.

A major issue does arise with multiple internet connections and that is if you have your own email server like Exchange, should your primary internet connection fails then you could risk the possibility of not having email at all.  Here is where you would need to discuss with your internet providers to establish what is known as BGP to ensure that your email will work regardless of what internet connection is working.

In summary, if your business relies on the internet then you should truly consider having a second connection through a second ISP.  It makes good business sense especially in disaster recovery.

(c)2014 William Lewis