c. Research and describe different disaster recovery plans currently used by companies.

Disaster Recovery Plans
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Disaster Recovery Plans
Dynamism in the business world has seen organizations change the way they go about their operations on a daily basis. Increased competition means that companies have to come up with ways of gaining competitive advantages over their rivals to stay in business in the long-term. In recent years, cost reduction and efficiency in operations have emerged as the core elements necessary to sustain perpetual business viability. In a bid to utilize these two critical elements, most organizations have shifted their focus to efficient utilization of people and information resources. Continuous technological advancements and effective people management have led to the over-reliance in people and IT within most business and non-business organizations. Such over-reliance carries an underlying risk. Any disruptions or flaws in peoples’ operations or the information systems carry the potential of severe business losses.
Fig 1.0: Disaster Causes
Source :http://www.businesstechnologyservices.biz/data.html
A disaster recovery plan is a detailed series of steps or procedures that outline how, when and what should be done after a catastrophic event. In business, disaster planning hugely revolves around data recovery. Unforeseen circumstances such as system failures, adverse weather conditions, power outages, or fires may severely affect telecommunication systems and lead to interruptions in business operations. Information and communications are the two main propellants of business today, and any non-access to these systems will materially affect the cash flows.

Hence, business managers focus on how to maintain commercial activities if they lose access to key resources and facilities. Such contingency plans are what we call disaster recovery plans. This paper will focus majorly on the three essential disaster recovery plans employed by businesses today. These are:
Information systems and data recovery plans.
Contingency facilities recovery plans.
People recovery plans.
Information systems and data recovery plans
“Data recovery involves finding lost data and assembling it into useful data files” (Vacca& Rudolph, 2010). Loss of crucial information can grind business operations to a halt. It is essential to have a data recovery plan that will allow the business to get up and running within a short period after a power outage or other pandemic. Storage, servers, and networking are the key elements of any data recovery programs. IT, data, and essential applications are the focus of any data recovery plans. Companies ensure they have recovery options for servers, desktops, networks, data, laptops, connectivity, and any other wireless devices. Most organizations employ the use of two types of recovery techniques for hardware, software, connectivity, computer room surroundings, and data and restoration. Internal strategies entail the establishment of alternate facilities with hardware configured to run similar applications and software. In case of damage to one site, data mirroring between the two locations enables easier restoration.
Fig 1.1. Data recovery system
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Source: http://data-centers.in/data-centre-disaster-recovery-plan/
The second strategy used is outsourcing. This approach involves the use of professional vendors who can provide data solutions to the organizations. The vendors possess the necessary skills and resources to conduct data backup and restoration when needed. The vendors exclusively carry out management and hosting of information streams, applications, and data security services. The vendor also provides ancillary services such as malware detection and data filtering offering more cyber security. Just like with the internal strategies, the vendor compiles an inventory of critical hardware together with software and applications necessary to run them. Then, they develop a strategy to backup all essential information. Organizations also use standardized systems and maintain copies of programs for easier installation or replacement.
Contingency facilities recovery plans
“No one starts the day believing that the physical presence of his/her business will be gone later that day” (Sullivan, 2001). Most large organizations have no problem recovering from catastrophes, as they tend to have secondary facilities installed at all times. Thus, in case of fire or disastrous weather conditions, business operations are migrated immediately to these new facilities with little interruptions to their smooth running. On the other hand, small and medium enterprises have had problems with the establishment of remote facilities due to its costly nature. However, the cost interruptions to business operations due to severe events far much outweigh the cost of construction of secondary facilities to ensure business continuity. Sullivan observed that ninety percent of enterprises lacking disaster recovery plans did not last more than two years after suffering a catastrophic loss. The awareness of such terrifying statistics coupled with regulatory requirements has seen many companies adopt recovery plans. These organizations have purchased remote recovery sites, installed emergency power options, have emergency staff on standby, and have prepared resilience assessment centers.
People recovery plans
People run business operations and as such are the most essential to business success. It is futile to have recovery plans for data and facilities when there will be no one to run the new business centers. Apart from containing the threat of a catastrophe, it is essential for the business also to safeguard and support employees (Kirvan, 2009).There are two types of disaster recovery plans for employees. The first plans are widely employed by businesses and involve the protection of key personnel. Departments and branches also cross-train so that in case any of their key personnel is affected, a ready replacement is available. In addition, during pandemic such as flooding, employee ability to work is affected. Disruptions to transit systems and displacement from homes influence people’s social lives and as a result, organizations have counselors to work with the affected individuals. The second type of recovery plan is recovery from a bad hire. The hire of an unsuitable individual amounts to human disaster. The person may build horrible processes or write ad codes resulting in adverse outcomes for key systems or nosiness policy. Organizations carefully document such person’s activities to make it easy for corrective action once they depart.
References
Kirvan, P. (2009, March 5). Including Employees in Your Disaster Recovery Plans. Retrieved from http://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/tip/Including-employees-in-your-disaster-recovery-plan
Sullivan, N. (2001, Nov 27). Disaster Recovery Planning: A national Conference of CPA Practitioners. Accounting Web. Retrieved from http://www.accountingweb.com/practice/practice-excellence/disaster-recovery-planning-0
Vacca, J. R., & Rudolph, K. (2010). System forensics, investigation, and response. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.