WEBVTT 00:00.140 --> 00:05.560 Sometimes every once in a while really bad incidents take place. 00:05.580 --> 00:07.440 And when I say bad I mean really bad. 00:07.440 --> 00:14.670 Like we're talking hurricanes or acts of war or some type of really bad thing that's going to take place 00:14.970 --> 00:18.470 that is going to massively disrupt your infrastructure. 00:18.660 --> 00:21.840 And that's what contingency planning is all about. 00:21.840 --> 00:25.490 So you really have two things to think about here when you're talking about this. 00:25.530 --> 00:28.710 First of all you're talking about what we call disaster recovery. 00:28.710 --> 00:30.440 We have a hurricane. 00:30.480 --> 00:33.160 I live in Houston Texas we think about this stuff a lot. 00:33.330 --> 00:35.040 We have a hurricane coming in. 00:35.040 --> 00:39.220 We have a disaster it's going to put six feet of water in our offices. 00:39.300 --> 00:42.100 How do we recover from that type of a disaster. 00:42.240 --> 00:46.850 But on the same token I have an obligation to the people I pay rent to. 00:47.030 --> 00:47.930 To make money. 00:48.030 --> 00:51.600 So what do I do to keep my business continuity going. 00:51.600 --> 00:54.480 What do I do to keep everything going. 00:54.480 --> 01:00.330 So these two do work very much together and it's important that we can talk about him at the same time 01:00.540 --> 01:03.560 under we'll just use the term contingency planning. 01:03.560 --> 01:10.560 So the big thing we're going to talk about first is the idea of a disaster coming in let's say a hurricane 01:10.560 --> 01:15.310 does the knock on wood come into the Houston Texas area. 01:15.600 --> 01:18.600 I'm going to have to evacuate my offices. 01:18.690 --> 01:22.490 So what we talk about is the concept of a backup site. 01:22.500 --> 01:25.030 Now there are different levels of backup site. 01:25.110 --> 01:28.020 We call them cold warm and hot. 01:28.020 --> 01:29.730 Let me show you all three of those. 01:29.730 --> 01:33.420 The first type of backup or recovery site is a cold site. 01:33.420 --> 01:37.740 The way to remember a cold side is that it takes weeks to bring it up on line. 01:37.740 --> 01:39.950 So this is going to be a basic office space. 01:40.050 --> 01:45.090 There'll be buildings with air conditioning and chairs and desks but there won't be any operational 01:45.090 --> 01:45.540 equipment. 01:45.540 --> 01:49.290 There may be some equipment on site but it's basically not plugged in. 01:49.290 --> 01:55.550 The big benefit of a cold side is that it's the cheapest of all the different types of recovery sites. 01:55.590 --> 02:01.350 Second is a warm site a warm site will take days to actually bring online. 02:01.410 --> 02:07.470 In this case it's a cold site but it does have operational equipments so all the computers are there. 02:07.590 --> 02:13.290 They probably have their basic software running but they have either very little of your functional 02:13.290 --> 02:15.460 data or no data whatsoever. 02:16.930 --> 02:24.610 The last one is a hot site a hot site can take just hours to bring online many hot sites will have real 02:24.610 --> 02:30.130 time synchronization literally everything happening on our main site is being mirrored over at our Hot 02:30.130 --> 02:30.680 Site. 02:30.880 --> 02:35.120 So almost all the data is ready to go and usually just a quick update. 02:35.170 --> 02:37.870 Get the people over there and we're up and running. 02:37.870 --> 02:41.810 The downside to hot sites is that they are very very expensive. 02:41.860 --> 02:49.740 Simply picking a back up or recovery site just by going by the cold warm hot concept is good but there's 02:49.750 --> 02:55.860 a lot of other things to consider when you're thinking about sites like this for example distance distance 02:55.890 --> 02:58.770 is a really big deal in Texas. 02:58.780 --> 03:01.350 These hurricanes can be really really wide. 03:01.360 --> 03:07.420 So we want to make sure that whatever backup site we're using isn't going to be affected by the same 03:07.420 --> 03:08.230 event. 03:08.230 --> 03:13.180 Luckily for us in Houston we've got Dallas Texas and that's where we go whenever the hurricanes come 03:13.180 --> 03:13.870 along. 03:14.140 --> 03:19.710 Secondly when you're thinking about the location you need to think about some really important stuff 03:19.720 --> 03:20.590 for example. 03:20.590 --> 03:23.860 Pretty much everybody got power and they pretty much everybody has Internet. 03:23.980 --> 03:27.000 But do they have the level of internet connectivity you need. 03:27.130 --> 03:33.700 What internet tear are they connected to or are you way down on some little terrible ISP or are you 03:33.820 --> 03:34.770 in a big pile. 03:34.780 --> 03:35.970 What are your requirements. 03:35.980 --> 03:37.540 You need to think about that. 03:37.600 --> 03:38.680 Other things come into play. 03:38.680 --> 03:40.950 For example if you're going to be there for a while. 03:40.990 --> 03:42.400 What about housing. 03:42.400 --> 03:44.340 What about entertainment for employees. 03:44.350 --> 03:48.300 You need to think about all of these things when you're putting all this together. 03:48.920 --> 03:51.440 Third are going to be legal issues. 03:51.440 --> 03:59.390 For example one big issue we have is different types of data are handled different ways depending on 03:59.390 --> 04:00.880 what country they're in. 04:00.890 --> 04:08.600 So we need to make sure that wherever we are moving to expensive it's a different country that our legal 04:08.600 --> 04:12.190 issues are handled in terms of whatever we need to do with that data. 04:12.350 --> 04:15.890 This can be even more challenging when you get into the cloud itself. 04:15.890 --> 04:22.130 Many countries require depending on your industry what you're doing that the data that you use on a 04:22.490 --> 04:28.370 given daily basis must be within the same country that you're doing business and you really do have 04:28.370 --> 04:32.800 to work very very closely with cloud providers to make sure that that's taking place. 04:33.520 --> 04:39.190 So disasters happen you've got backup sites and everything's there. 04:39.190 --> 04:41.160 You've thought about it and you've established a site. 04:41.170 --> 04:44.650 You've made a decision on what type of site you want. 04:44.650 --> 04:49.510 Keep in mind that business continuity and data recovery go hand-in-hand. 04:49.540 --> 04:56.410 So the hurricane has gone away and the power's back up and we've mopped the floors and we're ready to 04:56.410 --> 04:57.600 come back home. 04:57.820 --> 05:02.230 Now what we have to deal with something that we call the order of restoration. 05:02.230 --> 05:06.880 So what I'm going to do is just give you a sample order of restoration and this is the one we actually 05:06.880 --> 05:09.040 use here in total seminars. 05:09.040 --> 05:11.890 The first thing I'm going to check when we walk in the door is power. 05:11.890 --> 05:14.020 I want to make sure the power is restored. 05:14.140 --> 05:18.970 Now just because the power company says things are restored I want to make sure my outlets are functional 05:19.180 --> 05:25.170 and I'm going to be running around with a tester to make sure I've got good AC power where I need it. 05:25.210 --> 05:30.400 Second I'm going to make sure my wired LAN is up and running and any switches that are interconnecting 05:30.400 --> 05:34.690 all my cable runs is up and good and everybody's happy. 05:34.690 --> 05:39.270 Number three my internet service provider link here total seminars. 05:39.280 --> 05:41.990 We can't get a lot of work done unless we're on the Internet. 05:42.010 --> 05:46.200 So the third thing I'm going to do is make sure that the link is good and the routers are up and running. 05:46.300 --> 05:52.900 And make sure we're in good shape there next any active directory or DNS or D.H. C.P. servers. 05:52.900 --> 05:55.860 So I've got a couple of window boxes that tend to handle all that. 05:55.870 --> 05:59.120 I make sure those are up in cooking next after that. 05:59.140 --> 06:04.870 Are our accounts servers this way if people are calling in to buy things or to have questions or to 06:04.870 --> 06:06.190 place orders. 06:06.250 --> 06:09.200 We have the servers ready to deal with that stuff. 06:09.280 --> 06:14.180 So along with that all my sales folks and account folks are going to have to have their workstations 06:14.200 --> 06:15.140 up and running. 06:15.430 --> 06:19.510 Now once we get the day to day stuff go and then I'm going to go looking back towards production for 06:19.510 --> 06:24.340 example you like my videos Well we need to make sure our video production servers that store all these 06:24.340 --> 06:30.270 videos are up and running and on top of that all my post-production guys need their video post-production 06:30.280 --> 06:32.370 workstations up and running. 06:32.410 --> 06:33.720 Now that's the core stuff. 06:33.730 --> 06:38.770 But from there little things that aren't quite so critical to us for example I'm going to get my wireless 06:38.770 --> 06:43.360 access points up and running at this point for the occasional times when people go wireless as they 06:43.360 --> 06:45.610 come into my office. 06:45.850 --> 06:49.270 And then last on my personal list are what I call peripherals. 06:49.360 --> 06:56.680 So things like printers cameras scanners faxes making sure that these are all up and running contingency 06:56.680 --> 07:01.130 planning without a little practice is just going to get you in trouble. 07:01.150 --> 07:05.940 Don't let your first disaster be the first time you actually put all this in order. 07:05.950 --> 07:11.540 So the big thing that we do more than anything else is we have annual exercises now. 07:11.560 --> 07:14.460 These exercises can manifest in a lot of different ways. 07:14.590 --> 07:19.540 You can do just a little tabletop exercise where your primary people are sitting around a table talking 07:19.540 --> 07:24.520 about how this goes but they go through the order and understand it or you can do more aggressively 07:24.520 --> 07:31.090 than that and actually do a fire drill where people go out and move servers and fire systems up and 07:31.090 --> 07:32.950 get in cars and go places. 07:32.950 --> 07:37.710 Expensive but if your systems are that critical it's not a bad investment. 07:37.750 --> 07:39.730 You need to think about a lot of different things here. 07:39.730 --> 07:42.580 For example the concept of fail over. 07:42.580 --> 07:50.650 It's always nice to talk about these recovery sites but fail over simply means the process of making 07:50.650 --> 07:51.550 that happen. 07:51.610 --> 07:54.110 And that's where people get in trouble with this type of stuff. 07:54.130 --> 08:00.310 They spend zillions of dollars setting up a warm site but they don't actually go to the fail over process 08:00.610 --> 08:02.640 of making all of this happen. 08:02.650 --> 08:08.380 I think it's very important personally to at least one time in every person's career to at least feel 08:08.620 --> 08:09.450 that process. 08:09.460 --> 08:14.650 All my employees have to deal with actually getting in their cars and going places and I like to say 08:14.650 --> 08:17.650 I do it annually but probably not quite that often. 08:17.650 --> 08:22.350 The other thing to think about is stuff like for example alternative processing sites. 08:22.350 --> 08:27.490 Now when we talk about processing sites it's easy for me as a little company like total seminars to 08:27.490 --> 08:32.630 just have this one warm site up in Dallas Texas where we do everything. 08:32.740 --> 08:38.260 But with larger organizations you might have to have different types of processing sites for example 08:38.500 --> 08:43.350 if you've got a big server farm you might be able to have your sales people back up and running. 08:43.360 --> 08:48.140 But what are you going to be doing about whatever type of data that you're dealing with with your infrastructure. 08:48.310 --> 08:53.920 So a lot of times we end up making cross agreements with sometimes even competitors and saying I've 08:53.920 --> 08:58.390 got a farm you've got to farm if one of us gets in trouble we'll just go ahead and use each other's 08:58.390 --> 09:04.630 space and you work out an agreement like that the other big issue that comes into play or alternative 09:04.630 --> 09:10.630 business practices now little things for a company like me become very very important for example. 09:10.690 --> 09:16.120 How do we take credit card information if we're using different types of accounting software. 09:16.120 --> 09:21.090 How is that going to come into play if we are suddenly working in another state here in the United States. 09:21.220 --> 09:26.950 Even sales tax issues come into play and we need to think about these alternative business practices 09:26.980 --> 09:28.580 before it happens. 09:28.810 --> 09:33.580 And the last big one and this one's really important we do this both was exercises and you certainly 09:33.580 --> 09:35.680 do it if the real McCoy never happens. 09:35.800 --> 09:43.510 And that is after action reports a clear and detailed documentation of everything that happened so that 09:43.570 --> 09:50.260 if it ever happens again you'll be ready to handle any form of business contingency planning.