The Monday the school went dark
A burst pipe floods the school server room on a Sunday night. On Monday, the doors will not open, the register will not load and the dinner payments fail.
The headteacher asks: "What is our plan?" There is a folder. Nobody has read it. The phone numbers in it are two years old.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Disaster recovery plan | steps to get IT systems working again after a disaster |
| Business continuity plan | steps to keep the business running during a disruption |
| Critical system | a system the organisation cannot work without |
| Business impact analysis | working out how an outage hurts each part of the organisation |
| Maximum downtime | the longest a system may be off before the harm is too great |
| Communication plan | who tells whom what, and how, when something goes wrong |
| Compliance | following the laws, rules and policies that apply |
| UK GDPR | the law that protects personal data |
| Personal data | facts about a living person |
| Risk | something that might go wrong, and how bad it would be |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can describe the five stages of making a recovery or continuity plan, and what each stage produces.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Five stages of planning
A good plan is made in order. The five stages are identify, analyse, design, implement and measure.
Measure leads back to identify. Plans go out of date, so the circle never ends.
Stage 1: identify
Find three things.
Risks: what could go wrong? Flood, fire, power cut, a virus attack, a broken cable.
Critical systems: which systems must run for the school to work? The register, the door system and the payments.
Requirements: what do you need to recover them? People, power, spare kit, money and space.
Quick check
Have a go
Quick check
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.