What is a Data File Recovery?Need
to review data file recovery and data security for an information
management strategy and want some practical timesaving suggestions?
Data protection, and disaster recovery, is a set policies, standards and procedures used by an organization to ensure that the business can 
continue to function in the event of a major disaster. Disasters may be
natural such as flood or earthquake, or may be caused by human error
or
malicious intent such as a virus.Imagine if a bank has all of its information stored on one computer system at one location and an earthquake destroys the building. All data could be lost and impossible to recover. Think for a minute how long would the bank remain in business with customers clamoring for their money and no one with any idea of the status of customer accounts. It's impossible to imagine some thing like that occurring today because policies and procedures are normally established to ensure that the business can keep running in the event of catastrophe. Disaster recovery is generally part of a larger set of business continuity policies, standards and processes designed to ensure that the business can keep operating in event of disaster. Information management is concerned with ensuring that the data and information needed to support the business is available, in the right hands, at the right time to make the right decision. This can only be assured with adequate disaster recovery plans. Data File Recovery and Data
Security Checklist
Be sure to address most of the following items while completing this portion of the information management strategy study. This will help formulate requirements for change.  Are backups made on a
regular basis?Do they include
full data storage backup?Are they sent off-site?
(Most disaster
recovery plans will have
a
planned rotation of taking backups and moving them off-site to a safe
storage facility). This analysis should address any data
backup service utilized by the organization.Is data
replication
part of the
data protection plan? In other words
if we have a production system that is updating transactions every
minute on one
computer system is there a mechanism to replicate this to
a different
computer system?
This means that that if the first computer becomes disabled for any reason the second computer can start processing with no loss of data. Some database management systems provide utilities, which will mirror each transaction. As a transaction is completed on the first system, it will automatically be created on the second system. Do
we have high availability
requirements? Some businesses need
to have information available at all time with no “down” time while
others can afford to have a longer “down-time” if something goes
wrong. Is there a formal
data file recovery plan? Have the processes
been tested to ensure that recovery can occur in the expected time
frame?Have daily
backups been tested
to ensure that
data can be restored in
event of non-catastrophic issues? Is everyone
aware of their role
in
disaster recovery? We can think
about IT roles but what about customer services—Are adequate procedures
in
place to ensure they know “what” message to convey to customer
enquiries in the event of a disaster?Is disaster
planning included in the data management plan?Is there an
established information management security policy?Are data
warehouse security issues included in the data security policy?Does the
organization have requirements for data security compliance such as the
payment card industry (PCI) requirements?Have the data
backup solution and data retrieval processes been tested?Have the disaster recovery
and data protection processes been tested?Are data
retention requirements clearly documented and followed?Has the data
security policy been reviewed? Summary... Data file recovery and data security is a critical part of the overall information management process. It is essential that we understand how much disaster recovery planning has been completed by the organization and how much remains to be completed to ensure successful information management. A set of policies, standards and procedures must be fully developed, tested and communicated to ensure successful information management.
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