7050_Week 3 Short Paper
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Nov 24, 2024
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Running Head: DATA BACKUP PLANNING, DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING &
BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING
Data Backup Planning, Disaster Recovery Planning, & Business Continuity Planning
Student Name
Wilmington University
March 21, 2023
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DATA BACKUP PLANNING, DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING & BUSINESS
CONTINUITY PLANNING
Data Backup Planning, Disaster Recovery Planning, & Business Continuity Planning
Overview
According to Gupta et al. (2016), today’s business environment has significantly evolved.
With this evolution, businesses cannot tolerate downtime, cyber-attack, a simple human error, or
a natural disaster because that could completely wipe the business. Therefore, a comprehensive
data backup planning, disaster recovery planning, and business continuity planning is the key to
resilience of a business as well as organization survival. However, data backup planning, disaster
recovery planning, and business continuity planning cannot be comprehensive without specific
elements whose presence means that they can perform the specific function for which they are
created by an organization (Gupta et al., 2016).
Elements of a Data Backup Planning
According to Michener (2015), organizations in today’s business environment cannot
operate without data and, therefore, losing the data could mean an organization permanently
closing down. This explains why organizations are developing data backup plan. Although data
backup strategies may be different, they have specific elements which make them effective.
These elements include on-site backups, off-site backups, backup schedule, backup testing, and
data security controls. The on-site backups is the element that describes backing up of data
within the organization. With an organization backing up data on-site, it means that the data be
restored much faster than if the organization was relying on off-site backups (Michener, 2015).
The off-site backups is the element which can be said to be backups of backups because
they are the data backups that an organization uses in the event the on-site backups are not
working (Shaikh & Sasikumar, 2015). An organization can store the off-site backups either in the
cloud or in physical media. As note all types of data are equal, it means that an organization
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DATA BACKUP PLANNING, DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING & BUSINESS
CONTINUITY PLANNING
should have a data backup schedule. This means that the element of backup schedule helps in
determining how often some data should be backed up based on the importance of the data
(Shaikh & Sasikumar, 2015).
After an organization has created a data backup planning, it must be tested. Therefore, the
element of data backup helps in ensuring the reliability of data the data backup planning and this
cannot be achieved without regularly testing the planning. Besides regularly testing the data
backup planning, the backups must be screened for malware infections before they are used.
Wherever an organization stores its data backups, they must be ensured they remain unaffected.
This is the essence of the data security control elements. The data security controls element helps
in ensuring the data backups are in pristine condition (Shaikh & Sasikumar, 2015).
Elements of a Disaster Recovery Planning
An organization can effectively prepare and protect against disasters by creating and
implementing a disaster recovery plan. When creating a disaster recovery plan, it should be in
such a way that it is capable of addressing all types of disasters. Such a disaster recovery plan
can be created by incorporating certain elements, one of which is creating a disaster recovery
team. The responsibility of the disaster recovery team is to help an organization to develop,
implement, update, and test the disaster recovery plan, therefore, ensuring the quick recovery
from a disaster (Cook, 2015).
Another element is the identification of disaster risks. When organizations identify
disaster risks, they will be able to quickly handle the disasters which consequently help in
reducing downtime and minimizing damage. There is also the element in which an organization
identifies critical applications, resources, and data (Cook, 2015). With this identification, an
organization can easily determine the survivability of these resources and what needs to be done
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DATA BACKUP PLANNING, DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING & BUSINESS
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to achieve it. The fourth element is the specifications of the backup and offsite recovery. This
element helps to quickly and efficiently restore organization functions and operations. Lastly, the
disaster recovery plan should be thoroughly tested and updated to ensure that it is keeping up
with the evolving risks (Cook, 2015).
Elements of a Business Continuity Planning
It is important that organizations have in place business continuity plan. This is because,
after the recovery of the business operations and functions, the business continuity plan must be
initiated to ensure everything in the organization is up and running. Therefore, there are specific
elements that a business continuity plan must possess (Sawalha, 2020). The first element is the
business impact analysis (BIA). A BIA is for identifying and predicting the consequences of
business disruptions. Additionally, the BIA element enables an organization to gather data for
developing recovery strategies. The second element is risk assessment which helps an
organization to identify, understand, and evaluate potential risks to the aspects of the operations
of the organization (Sawalha, 2020).
A third element of business continuity plan is the identification of the critical functions.
This element helps in revealing the processes that are key to an organization maintaining and
running its business operations in the event of a disaster (Sawalha, 2020). Communication is also
a key element of a business continuity plan. The communication element helps in determining
how communication with stakeholders in the organization will happen in the event of a disaster.
Therefore, it should have a crisis communication strategy. Lastly, the element of testing is also
key to the success of a business continuity plan. While an organization may have a business
continuity plan, it is imperative that it is regularly tested. This will help in ensuring it is
functional and effective (Sawalha, 2020).
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DATA BACKUP PLANNING, DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING & BUSINESS
CONTINUITY PLANNING
Summary
While today’s business environment is characterized by changes which have been
beneficial to organizations, it has become a risky environment. The risks have been contributed
by the natural and man-made disasters. However, from what has been discussed in this paper,
organizations can do well with a data backup plan, disaster recovery plan, and business
continuity plan. Although these plans are important, they should possess specific elements for
them to be effective and achieve the goals for which they have been created. Additionally, in this
paper, we have described the elements, all of which are interdependent.
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DATA BACKUP PLANNING, DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING & BUSINESS
CONTINUITY PLANNING
References
Cook, J. (2015). A six-stage business continuity and disaster recovery planning cycle.
SAM
Advanced Management Journal
,
80
(3), 23.
Gupta, S., Starr, M. K., Farahani, R. Z., & Matinrad, N. (2016). Disaster management from a
POM perspective: Mapping a new domain.
Production and Operations
Management
,
25
(10), 1611-1637.
Michener, W. K. (2015). Ten simple rules for creating a good data management plan.
PLoS
computational biology
,
11
(10), e1004525.
Sawalha, I. H. (2020). Business continuity management: use and approach’s
effectiveness.
Continuity & Resilience Review
,
2
(2), 81-96.
Shaikh, R., & Sasikumar, M. (2015). Data classification for achieving security in cloud
computing.
Procedia computer science
,
45
, 493-498.
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