Week 3 Topic 1

[Pongthep Miankaew]

If you are going to develop a disaster recovery plan for your organization’s information system, in your personal opinion, what procedures should be included in the plan, what technology (backup, replicate, or any other technology) is suitable for your organinzation regarding budget, system scale or size, and people?

[Rawinan Soma]

My organization is the huge scale data lake of Thailand health data center. Health-related data was generated largely every day. It is also sensitive to long downtime because of large number of end-user. So, in my opinion, it prefers to use data replication server to use as disaster recovery because it could serve as backup system faster than data backup and recovery, easily scalable by investing server and storage or using cloud providers. The downside of data replication technology are they are harder to implemented and vastly investment of infrastructure.

[Wachirawit Supasa]

My organization is clinical trial and IT system used by small quantities of people. It is required by our trial International Review Board and sponsors that information in the database must be correct, confidential and available at all time. So, in my opinion, deploying the system required many security implementation.

To protect confidentiality of information, I would like to use encryption for the data communicating between network, and user access control that authorized only responsible personnel on specific date and time of their shifts. For data integrity, test result that recorded on the database should has hashing when transferring data between applications for verify whether that data is corrected. And because we generate a lot of data during clinical trial period, Data back up is essential so I preferred backing up to the cloud because our internet is quiet good and we have no estate to install back up server.

[Kridsada Sirichaisit]

I design replication server for disaster recovery plan. My hospital has two opposite sites that has about 800 meters distance, My hospital database server was run on mysql on linux server. I have main server and replication server. The data backup transfer by 1 Gb fiber optic. I can recovery server when disaster was occurred. And I plan to backup database to cloud server in the next year.

[Sila Klanklaeo]

My organization has an essential information backup into on cloud Government, All data for backup is small, I backup it by MySQL software.

[Pongsakorn Sadakorn]

My workplace is a national organization that is focused on developing a policy, innovation, news knowledge, and strategy to combat vector-borne diseases so my organization database is not big and not complicated. For the disaster recovery plan, there are two ways that my division has chosen which are external hard drive backup and cloud backup.

[Sittidech Surasri]

My workplace is a Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) located in Thailand, Asia Pacific Regional Office (APRO). We have many projects and dealing with a lot of data, but it is not too much sensitive same as data in the bank. To develop the Disaster Recovery (DR) plan we can use the step; Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) for the DR planning and the following steps can be used:
1. Identification and Analysis of Disaster Risks/Threats by doing risk analysis covering threats
2. Classification of Risks Based on Relative Weights
3. Building the Risk Assessment, this process will do after the evaluation of the major risk categories is completed.
4. Determining the Effects of Disasters;
4.1 List of Disaster Affected Entities
4.2 Downtime Tolerance Limits
4.3 Cost of Downtime
4.4 Interdependencies
5. Evaluation of Disaster Recovery Mechanisms
6. Disaster Recovery Committee
The Disaster Recovery Technology (DRT) that I will select and implement in my workplace is that the backup system. The backup system that I will use is the Cloud system such as Microsoft Azure Backup or Office 365 system. The reason that I select these systems because of;
– Availability, that all authorized users can access to the data in real-time
– Secure, by following the policy of the Service Platform Provide
– Cost, that we can reduce the cost to maintain the service (we are currently backup the data onto the server) and reduce the labor cost as well. Moreover, the cost to upload/backup the data onto the Cloud System is reasonable. But it will be cost if you would like to restore the data.

[Naphat]

My office is an government organization and we have backed up by using the cloud system and external hard drive as well which will be divided into 2 sets are stored, first at the embassy of Thailand and the second set to be stored at a laboratory in the United States.

[Khaing Zin Zin Htwe]

The web recording and reporting system for the TB project I’m working on has a virtual server from Z.com for backup purchased with subscriptions. In cases, the physical server was stricken by a disaster, the backed up data can be retrieved. Some virtual servers (e.g., Amazon web service) provide customers with no down time warranty, which is a benefit. Since the data for my system is not too much, the cost on the virtual server is not considerably high, and the services are readily purchasable from my country.

[Saravalee Suphakarn]

For development of disaster recovery plan, I think we should follow the protocol that start with identification and risk analysis followed by classification of risk, risk assessment, determining the effects of disasters, and evaluation of disaster recovery mechanisms. My organization is regional veterinary laboratory and research center, the Department of Livestock Development (DLD). Because it is the latest veterinary research and development center of Thailand, it is a quite small organization, there is no resource as much as bigger center. But the laboratory data in the system is need high security especially preparation for disaster. The center may suitable with replication technology for disaster recovery technology because it can be help for data backup, less overload system, can process the report, and fast recovery time.

[Navinee Kruahong]

Step 1: Audit All of my IT Resources
Before I can plan for my disaster recovery steps, I need to know my organization well, all my organization’ network infrastructure. By creating an inventory of all of the IT resources on my network—and what data each resource holds—I can begin to consolidate and streamline things to make it easier to back up and recover information in the future.
Step 2: Determine What’s “Mission-Critical”
Not all data in my organization needs to be well protected. By sorting out the unnecessary or redundant data, my organization can reduce the size of the backup file that my organization have to make, saving storage space and expense later.
Step 3: Establish Roles and Responsibilities for Everyone in the DR Plan
When everyone knows what to do in response to an emergency, my DR plan will be more effective.
Step 4: Set Your Recovery Goals
How quickly should my organization be able to recover from a disaster? How much (and what) data can my organization afford to lose in case of a disaster? Setting the organization’s goals for recovery point and recovery time objectives can prove to be crucial in an effective disaster recovery plan.
Step 5: Find a Remote Data Storage Solution
Right now, the gold standard for remote data backup would be cloud-based solutions that can automatically download and copy data every few days (or even every few hours).
However, physical media backups, while slower and more cumbersome to deploy, are also easier to isolate from infected systems by keeping them offline until they’re needed. This makes them less likely to be corrupted by ransomware and other malware than auto-updating cloud storage.
Step 6: Create a Test for the Recovery Plan
To ensure that my plan will work when I need it. For this reason, it’s vital to have a method for periodically testing my disaster recovery plan.
When creating this test, consider the following:
– Single Points of Failure
– Recovery Time
– Recovery Point
My organization doesn’t has many human resources and data. So, I should remote data backup into my plan using cloud-based solutions that can automatically download and copy data every few days (or even every few hours).

[Kaung Khant Tin]

For a disaster recovery plan for my organization’s information system, I would first identify and analyze the disaster risks and threats to my organization, then I would classify these risks according to their relative weights. After these steps, I would assess the risks using a risk assessment form which will be followed by determining the effects of the disasters with a disaster effects diagram. Then I would form a disaster recovery committee. And I think “backup” is the most suitable technology for my organization.

[Author]

Posts