DisasterRecovery_2024 final

We are here to discuss Clear Brook City MUD's IT Disaster Recovery Plan for 2024. This comprehensive plan outlines a structured approach to ensure quick resumption of work following any unplanned incident. The document, developed by Daniel Cohen of TexPC Solutions LLC, emphasizes the critical steps needed to protect our information technology systems and telecommunications infrastructure. Our main objective is to uphold system uptime, data integrity, availability, and overall business continuity. The plan identifies eight key steps crucial for effective disaster recovery. These include assembling the plan, identifying its scope, appointing emergency contacts, designating a disaster recovery team, assigning roles and responsibilities, restoring technology functionality, managing data and backups, and conducting thorough testing and maintenance. Each step is meticulously detailed to ensure a robust response to any potential disruption. For instance, the plan specifies how to handle various potential disasters, such as floods, fires, tornadoes, electrical storms, acts of terrorism, and even loss of communication network services, detailing their probability and impact. We prioritize recovery based on business needs, with critical systems like CUSI Billing and Abila Accounting targeted for restoration within 24 hours. Other essential systems, such as email and internet access from the main building, are set for a 48-hour recovery. The plan also includes sections on emergency response, outlining procedures for plan triggering events like total loss of communications or power, and ransomware attacks. We have a clear activation strategy for our Disaster Response Team, detailing how members will be involved and their responsibilities. Regular testing is an integral part of our strategy to ensure the plan remains effective and up-to-date. For example, a test on 06/05/2024, involving the New-App-Server, aimed to simulate recovery with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 30 minutes. While the virtual server restoration was successful, it took more time than initially anticipated. Another test on 06/03/2024, focused on physical server failure, showed that the replication system initially had issues, but these were resolved to ensure data was never more than 5 minutes old. Furthermore, the plan addresses accessing shared files and virtual servers from remote locations, with a test demonstrating successful restoration within an RPO of 8 hours, leveraging services like IBackup for seamless and efficient data access. These tests highlight our commitment to continuous improvement and readiness.