IT contingency planning refers to the dynamic development of a coordinated recovery strategy and its implementations for IT systems (major application or general support system), operations, and data after a disruption.
Elate IT provides continuity of your operations through both documented and implementation procedures to make it possible for you to continue your operations.
Elate IT has got multiple contingency sites in different parts of city to help you continue your operations and has got its own locker storage areas for continuous backup of your data.
No. Elate IT has got its own secured and technologically updated Data Centre at one of its contingency sites to help client with online backups. Elate IT according to its policy of economical and appropriate solutions also provides warm backup storage, with servers stored at secured data centre for periodic updates.
Although contingency planning is associated with activities occurring in the operation/maintenance phase, contingency measures should be identified and integrated into ALL phases of the SDLC. Incorporating contingency planning into the SDLC reduces overall contingency planning costs, enhances contingency capabilities, and reduces impacts to system operations when the contingency plan is implemented.
Elate IT follows a methodology which will help you to create and establish measures with much fuss, the central idea behind the development and implementation of this plan is to make it simpler and effective. Elate IT does BIA (Business impact analysis) which is the second step in the contingency planning process, which is central to determining what recovery strategies should be implemented to ensure availability.
The type of alternate site should be determined through the BIA and should base on your budget, needs and ease of usage. The alternate site choice must be cost-effective and match the availability needs of the organization’s IT systems. Thus, if a system requires 100 percent availability, then a mirrored site might be the right choice. However, if the system can allow for multiple days of downtime, then a cold site might be a better option.
The distance between an alternate site or off-site storage facility from the primary site should be determined by the scope of the potential threat being considered rather than a specific distance. Elate IT uses the risk assessment to determine what geographic area, accessibility requirements, security requirements, environmental conditions, and cost factors are necessary for selecting a safe and practical offsite facility, this is why Elate IT with its multiple contingency sites is best option a client can get.
Notification procedures must be outlined in the contingency plan. Elate IT would provide a complete roll out plan which states who should be notified if a disruption occurs to the IT system and in what sequence they should be contacted.
The Reconstitution Phase, also called the Resumption Phase, is implemented after the Recovery Phase is executed. In the Reconstitution Phase, procedures are carried out to restore the original facility and IT system to normal operating conditions. If use of the original site or system is not feasible as a result of extensive damage, actions should be taken during the Reconstitution Phase to procure and prepare a new facility or IT system. When the original or new site and system are ready, recovery activities are terminated, and normal operations are transferred back to the organization’s facility.
Testing helps to evaluate the viability of plan procedures and also whether backup site is equipped and update with mandatory measures. It also helps to determine the ability of recovery staff to implement the plan, and identify deficiencies in the plan. Elate IT encourages its clients to do drills at our backup site. Clients can do one of three allocated drills any time after agreement, while other drills should have at-least 3 months gap between them. The whole procedure is done under careful watch of experienced Elate IT staff to make the whole drill as close to reality as possible.
Elate IT provides many options which other service providers either don’t provide or provide at additional cost.
• Multiple Contingency sites at different parts of Karachi
• State of art Data centre for online backup
• Locker storage area for cold backup
• Secure and controlled environment
• 24 * 7 Availability of all resources
• Technical support services
Keeping complete backups at multiple sites will be sufficient for most companies, but you'll need to make sure that they are safe from both theft and hacking.
This will vary according to the size of your organization and the type of data involved, but it is recommended that a full system backups on the weekend, with incremental backups every night.
There's nothing inherently wrong with using tape backup, particularly if you're a small- or medium-sized business with a limited budget. However, with the availability of affordable Storage Over IP solutions (Online backup/ collocation), you can leverage the benefits of data replication over longer distances for a more sound disaster recovery strategy.
Perform a cross-departmental analysis to find out how your company is really using data. Then you can make sure you have appropriate backup methods and possibly save money on new and existing storage options that might be unnecessary.
"Hot backup or collocation" servers are on-site and constantly replicate the work being done by the main servers. While not an enterprise-wide solution, it makes good sense to keep hot backup servers if you have a critical server or server farm.
