A plan nobody has tried
A fire drill that nobody ever runs is only a poster. A recovery plan is the same.
A plan has to be written, signed by the right person, tried out, and then made better. If you skip the trying, you find the mistakes on the worst day of the year.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Scope | What a plan covers, and what it does not. |
| Resource | Something the plan needs, such as a system, a person or a piece of equipment. |
| Sign-off | A named person agrees to the plan in writing. |
| Test | Try the plan out for real or in practice. |
| Frequency | How often something happens. |
| Amend | Change a document to make it better. |
| Continuous improvement | Making the plan a little better each time. |
| Audit | A check of the plan and the records by someone independent. |
| Internal audit | An audit done by people from the same organisation. |
| External audit | An audit done by people from outside. |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can say how a recovery plan is created, approved, tested and improved.
Starter: what you already know
Have a go
Starter: what you already know
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Create and approve
Create the plan. List the resources it needs: the systems to recover and the equipment to run them on. Write who does what, in which order.
Approve the plan. The right person signs it off, for example the IT director. A plan nobody has approved may not be followed, and no money may be set aside for it.
Test the plan
Testing has five parts:
- Identify the scope of the test and the resources it needs.
- Decide how often to test.
- Run the test.
- Review the result and write it down.
- Amend the plan from what you learned.
A test can be small, such as restoring one file. Or it can be large, such as closing a room and recovering all of it.
Check: create, approve, test
Have a go
Check: create, approve, test
4 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.