IT incidents are in general best put right quickly. Performance in this area can be tracked as MTTR, or mean time to repair. As a metric, MTTR has its advantages. One of these is that it is simple to handle. Read more
Ever since Marc Andreessen declared that software is eating the world, IT’s appetite for transforming the physical into the virtual has carried on unabated. The Internet has created massive amounts of new business. Read more
There is a tendency to believe that once disaster recovery measures have been taken and systems brought back into operation, a disaster recovery manager’s job is done (apart from planning and preparing for future incidents). However, much like patients leaving hospital after an operation, vigilance is crucial. Complications and relapses can happen unexpectedly. Vulnerabilities can be created unintentionally Read more
It may seem strange to talk about observing cybercriminals at work, in order to beef up one’s own disaster recovery. DR planning and management in honest enterprises are often required as preparation and repair regarding malware attacks, illicit infiltration and control, data compromise, and other cyber nasties. Yet criminals, so it seems, are learning about disaster recovery tactics too, in order to build resilience into their attack infrastructure and resources. European and American police forces have been working to break criminals’ botnets, which are networks of machines such as PCs and servers belonging to others, but infected or controlled by attackers. The botnets may be used to spread malware infections or to perpetrate denial of service attacks on yet other machines. Police teams now see a trend among criminals to create several smaller botnets, rather than one bigger one. If one botnet is discovered and broken, the criminals can then Read more
Sometimes we get so busy trying to do things right that we get blindsided to some of the things we might be doing wrong. Doing things right can be considered as necessary, but not sufficient. Not doing things wrong (you’ll have to excuse a double negative here!) is the other half of the equation, only to be neglected at your peril. What can go wrong? Read more
Where there’s data, there’s disaster recovery planning, right? By now, many organisations (but by no means all) have understood the need to put disaster recovery solutions in place for mission critical apps and the data they use, crunch, or generate. Read more
In this disaster recovery blog, you’re probably used to seeing articles on DR, DRP, DRM and in general anything relating to getting data and systems back in order after an IT incident. Read more
Like a challenge? Trying to figure out your disaster recovery plan for a legacy system could be just the thing. But don’t come complaining when you’ve run out of aspirin to take the pain away, because DR for old apps and the machines on which they run can be a very complicated affair. Read more
Back in 2007, Computerworld published an article about data disaster horror stories. There was an ant-infested hard drive in Thailand: insect-repellent spray killed off the ants and the drive. Read more
Remember transistors? Of course, you do. It’s just that they’re now buried so deep in the technology we use every day, that we take them for granted. You probably remember the principle of the transistor, too. To put it simply, a transistor acts as an amplifier; at least, that’s one of its functions. By making a small change in one current flowing through it, you can cause a much bigger change in another current flowing through it. While this is handy for making iPods and spaceships, it’s the tiny-to-tremendous effect itself that we’re discussing here. In particular, IT disasters can be triggered by tiny changes, which are then amplified in catastrophic proportions. But can the same effect be used in reverse for disaster recovery? Read more