Top Ten Disaster Recovery Planning Tools
1. Living Disaster Recovery Planning System (LDRPS)
www.strohlsystems.com/software/ldrps
LDRPS is a mature and highly respected DR planning product from Strohl Systems. You can choose from five versions to fit any size organization. You can also get LDRPS as a hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) solution in which Strohl Systems hosts the application in its data center so you don’t need to install and maintain the software on your own premises.
Some of the features available in LDRPS include
- Customizable best-practices-based plan navigators
- Built-in standard reports
- Customizable reports
- Dependency maps
- Drag-and-drop call lists
- Location resource management
- Sample final plans
- Customizable screens
- Scheduled importing and plan publishing
LDRPS has been a successful DR planning product for more than twenty years.
2. BIA Professional
www.strohlsystems.com/software/biaprofessional
BIA Professional, a software product from Strohl Systems, guides you through the process of developing a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) survey, organizing the survey data, and presenting the final results. It paints a detailed picture of financial and operational vulnerabilities, disaster-related impacts, and possible recovery strategies.
A feature called BIA Professional Web Server allows your organization to post online surveys in which selected subject matter experts in your organization receive a link via e-mail that they can click to take the survey online. This survey approach allows you to easily collect data about critical business processes.
BIA Professional contains several features:
- Audit and approval of surveys: Support for company management review and approval of BIA surveys prior to their release.
- Activity map: Guides you through the steps for creating a BIA survey.
- Question branching: Permits the survey designer to create a survey in which users are asked only relevant questions.
- Reporting: Simplified report creation that includes a Report Wizard. You
can create reports in Microsoft Excel, Crystal Reports, or PDF formats.
3. COBRA Risk Analysis
www.securitypolicy.co.uk/riskanalysis
Consultative, Objective and Bi-functional Risk Analysis (COBRA) is a set of risk analysis and security review tools that C&A Systems Security developed.
The toolset consists of a default process:
- Questionnaire building: The COBRA tool has a large database of questions contained in question modules that you can select from a knowledge base. Each module addresses a specific risk area, including access control, physical security, software development, and so on. You can also build and add questions manually.
- Risk surveying: The risk surveyor tool manages the questionnaire completion process. Users can complete the questionnaire all at once, or they can return to it later. The tool also supports question branching, in which the program knows which questions to ask based on the answers given to earlier questions.
- Reporting: The report generator produces results from completed questionnaires.
A risk analysis is a key part of a Business Impact Analysis.
4. BCP Generator
BCP Generator is a popular template-driven tool that you can use to create business continuity plans. Yes, this book is about disaster recovery planning, but BCP Generator makes plans that strongly resemble disaster recovery procedures.
You can use BCP Generator in one of two ways:
- Template fill-in: If you’re familiar with your processes and want to get faster results, you can go straight to the templates and begin filling in details.
- Interactive guide: BCP Generator can guide you, step by step, through the entire process of creating a business continuity plan, from Business Impact Analysis to plan maintenance and everything in between.
BCP Generator gives you a highly structured Microsoft Word document that contains the entire business continuity plan, including a detailed table of contents.
5. DRI Professional Practices Kit
http://drii.org/drii/ProfessionalPractices/about_professional_detail.asp...
The Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) has developed a professional practices guide, and it has that guide freely available on its Web site. The sections in the guide are
- Introduction and Overview — How the Professional Practices Came to Exist
- Subject Area 1 — Project Initiation and Management
- Subject Area 2 — Risk Evaluation and Control
- Subject Area 3 — Business Impact Analysis
- Subject Area 4 — Developing Business Continuity Strategies
- Subject Area 5 — Emergency Response and Operations
- Subject Area 6 — Developing and Implementing Business Continuity Plans
- Subject Area 7 — Awareness and Training Programs
- Subject Area 8 — Exercising and Maintaining Business Continuity Plans
- Subject Area 9 — Public Relations and Crisis Coordination
- Subject Area 10 — Coordination with External Agencies
- Appendix A: North America — Sources and References Related to
Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
You can find a similar version of this material on the Disaster Recovery Journal
Web site at www.drj.com/GAP.
6. Disaster Recovery Plan Template
http://www.e-janco.com/drp.htm
If you want to get on a real fast track, the DR Plan Template is a full set of DR
planning template documents that you fill out. The content is broken up into
the following sections:
- Overview: DR plan mission, scope, authorization, responsibility, and key assumptions
- Business Impact Analysis: Includes scope, objectives, critical timeframes, and impact statements
- Backup strategy: Includes data center systems, file servers, data at outsourced sites, workstations, and PDAs
- Disaster recovery: Includes recovery team selection and responsibilities for damage assessment, salvage, and recovery procedures
- Emergency procedures: Actual procedures for assessment, salvage, and recovery
- DR plan administration: Lifecycle matters, including plan maintenance, training, testing, and distribution
If you use a template-centric tool such as this one, I recommend that you still create your plan by using this book and then make adjustments to that plan, as needed. By relying solely on a template solution, you may overlook critical risks and issues.
7. SLA Toolkit
http://www.service-level-agreement.net
You need Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to define service delivery in IT organizations. Service Level Agreements are formal service agreements between suppliers and customers that define the quantity and quality of services delivered to customers.
Disaster recovery operations are probably the most vital services that an organization performs. If your organization has complex processes and interdependencies, you may want to formally define recovery operations in the context of Service Level Agreements.
The sections in the SLA Toolkit are
- Introduction
- Scope of Work
- Performance, Tracking, and Reporting
- Problem Management
- Compensation
- Customer Duties and Responsibilities
- Warranties and Remedies
- Security
- Intellectual Property Rights and Confidential Information
- Legal Compliance and Resolution of Disputes
- Termination
- General
- Signatures
- Schedules
If your organization already uses SLAs extensively, you probably don’t need this tool. But if you’re considering SLAs, this tool may help you to better
understand their structure and content.
8. LBL ContingencyPro Software
www.rothstein.com/data/dr743.htm
This Web-based browser software tool automates the entire business continuity plan development process and provides an effective method for maintaining the plan. The software is a knowledge-based system that certified business continuity planning experts developed.
The knowledge base in this software product contains best practices for business continuity planning, as well as hundreds of electronic tools, guides, templates, and samples. These systems are fully integrated with the Microsoft Office Suite, so you should be able to use them easily and intuitively. The software is based on a proven methodology that has successfully helped organizations recover from actual disaster events.
9. Emergency Management Guide for Business and Industry
www.fema.gov/pdf/business/guide/bizindst.pdf
This 67-page guide for emergency planning, response, and recovery claims to work for companies of all sizes. Produced by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the guide contains the following sections:
- Step 1: Establish a planning team.
- Step 2: Analyze capabilities and hazards.
- Step 3: Develop the plan.
- Step 4: Implement the plan.
- Emergency management considerations.
- Hazard-specific information. Includes fire, hazardous materials, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, severe storms, earthquakes, and technology emergencies.
This FEMA guide is a pre-9/11 document. The September 11, 2001 attacks did change how professionals think about disaster recovery planning, but the basics in this guide are still valid.
10. DRJ’s Toolbox
www.drj.com/new2dr/toolchest/drjtools.htm
This page is the Disaster Recovery Journal’s own list of tools and resources. The site changes from time to time when new tools and resources become available. As I write this, the site contains the following sections:
- Sample Requests for Proposal (RFP): Several sample RFPs for planning software and DR services. RFPs are documents that you send to suppliers as a way of formally requesting a proposal for products or services.
- Sample DR Plans: You can download several sample plans. Seeing how someone else put a plan together can help spark ideas of your own.
- Current Regulations: Information about regulations that may influence an organization’s disaster recovery planning effort.
- White Papers: Several papers on various topics, including terrorism, insurance, Business Impact Analyses, legal issues, and the impact of disasters on shareholder value.
-Online Resources: Links to other sites that contain valuable DR information.
Source: IT Disaster Recovery Planning for Dummies, 2008
