Disaster Recovery Plan

What can go wrong?  How can you prevent it (so recovery is not
needed)?  How can you recover if it does happen?

Hackers: What damage could they do to your web site?  What
preparations must you make, so you can be back up and running in a
minimum of time?

Natural Disasters: What about fire?  Flood?  Earthquake?  Power
outage?  How much time would it take to get your business up and
running again?  If your facility is destroyed, you can rent a new
facility.  If your data is lost, what will it take to get running
again?

This assignment calls for a written report, as though to upper
management, telling them what preparations you are making for various
disasters that could occur.  Tell the truth here.  What preparations
are you actually making?  Off-site storage of your data?  Practice
drills for bringing up a replacement server?

Also include in your report those disaster recovery steps that you are
not making, but that you believe should be made in a real business.
Request management support in arranging for these things.  Does your
off-site data storage need to be at the bottom of an abandoned salt
mine?  For a real business, do you need to have backup power available
within one hour?  Twenty-four hours?  Seven days?

Talk about various disasters that could occur.  Tsunami?  Fire?
Disgruntled employee?  Nuclear war?  Which disasters could reasonably
happen?  What should the business do in each case?  What are you
already doing?

In addition to the written report, you will be asked to make a brief
presentation in class discussing your disaster recovery plan, and
talking about the highlights of your report.  The in-class
presentation should be targetted to be about ten minutes long,
including questions and answers at the end.

Having a disaster recovery plan will aid you during the hacking phase
of this course, when your web site may be compromised and require
recovery.

You will be graded on how complete your analysis seems, and how
reasonable your requests and statements seem.  You will also be graded
on neatness of presentation and appropriate use of language.