CIS 523 – Disaster Recovery Plan And Critical Success Factors

Prompt : What is a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)? Why are critical success factors (CSFs) important? Identify and discuss briefly 3 elements of DRP

Disasters which may either be caused by human error or natural causes can result into very negative impacts for organizations (Carlson and Parker, 1998). Disaster Recovery Plan is a detailed procedure that an organization can use to facilitate resumption of critical functions to acceptable levels incase different types of disaster occur. This plan is considered one of the most critical management tool in organizations today considering the fact that both private and public organizations are now digitalized. The main reason behind this is that fact that any interference with the Information Systems Function service can greatly damage the operation capacity and the overall reputation of the organization. The Disaster Recovery Plan can therefore help to reduce the severity of a disaster, limit staff anxiety, and speed up recovery process (Carlson and Parker, 1998).

A combination of actions that an organization must do in order to succeed is known as Critical Success Factors (Elmeziane, Chuanmin and Elmeziane, 2011). As far as information systems projects are concerned, a Critical Success Factor refers to what a system must do in order to accomplish the desired goals. In the case of disaster management, Critical Success factors are important because they assist organizations to develop Disaster Recovery Plans which are aligned with the strategic business goals. Additionally, Critical Success Factors assist an organization to identify what should be included in the Disaster Recovery Plan in order to meet the company’s needs. This explains why Critical Success Factors form a very important part of the strategic planning process (Elmeziane, Chuanmin and Elmeziane, 2011).

The three elements of a Disaster Recovery Plan include a remote storage and data backup, alternative communication lines, and backup employee (Carlson and Parker, 1998). When implementing the Disaster Recovery Plan, an organization must remember to create a remote storage and data backup that can easily be accesses through Internet connection as this helps loss of data. In addition, alternate communication lines should be made available to prevent interruptions in the communication process. Again, an organization should avoid relying on only one employee to implement the Disaster Recovery Plan. A backup employee is necessary to facilitate uninterrupted implementation in case anything happens to the initially chosen employee (Carlson and Parker, 1998).

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