Emergency Planning Disasters That Can Critically Compromise

Emergency Planning

Disasters that can critically compromise the accessibility of knowledge include floods, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, employee sabotage, computer viruses, and theft. The effects of disasters can lengthen even after the restructure of physical damage. Simply, the earlier a business recovers from a disaster; it will experience lesser wide-ranging continuing effects of the disaster. Not only the thrashing of sales during a disaster is destructive for the company, "the loss of customers, vendors, inventory and employee records extend recovery times from weeks and months to years" (Carlson & Parker, 1998). However, if a company has a premeditated disaster recovery plan (DRP), it can reduce the nuisance of a disaster, whereas inappropriate preparations can result in a business experiencing liquidation of its bank accounts (Carlson & Parker, 1998).

In the Information Technology industry, Disaster Recovery (DR) security issues occur repeatedly. The critical security measures in the environment are frequently covered by the storage. However, these measures mostly do not prove to be enough. The need of the time is that the IT disaster recovery plans must address data security issues as well. It is also necessary that the storage managers consider and observe data security from the point-of-view of a wicked mugger. If these two strategies are applied, there are higher chances for companies to recuperate and improve their security systems in case of an attack, failure or disaster ("Disaster Recovery Security," 2011).

In the DIKW model (Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom), knowledge is ranked above information. Most of the strategies and procedures in disaster recovery of data and information taken up by the companies may not be adequate for the disaster recovery of knowledge. However, in case of emergencies, if a company has already planned for knowledge recovery, it may involve good data and information recovery plan. This is exceedingly important that companies take a diversity of approaches regarding emergency recovery in terms of knowledge management.

How to Protect Knowledge in Disastrous Events?

Information security can be assured by strategizing incident response. Incident response is, in fact, several steps taken in order to respond to data violations, malware eruptions and breaches etc. In a proper way. In turn, incident response directly ties-in to business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery in due course. The advantage of having an incident response is that if information system is taken down due to a flood, terrorist or hack attack or malware, the company would still have a business continuity and disaster recovery issue. Security incident response is thus really important while building a company's disaster recovery plans and technologies because no one knows about any future incidents. However, technologies for disaster recovery security differ from business to business. They are totally dependent on the company's network, layout, applications and information system's complexity.

Virtualization, basic data backups or continuous data protection (CDP), identity and access management technologies, cloud-based services are some of the kinds of technologies that can be used for recovering information and knowledge. The best technology can be adopted only after pondering over what is best for the business. Therefore, the best people must be approached who can decide about what technology to adopt after looking at the company's environment and identifying the real risks ("Disaster Recovery Security," 2011).

The companies should hire an employee who must be distinctively handed over the responsibility of "backing up critical data files at specified intervals and securing these data files at an off-site location" (Carlson & Parker, 1998). Data and knowledge characterize the central function of an information system. This is the reason why the significance of this critical task cannot be understated. Furthermore, it is essential that documentation of all workings of the disaster recovery plan be kept and maintained in black and white at settings outside the company (Carlson & Parker, 1998).

The companies could also adopt a Knowledge Continuity Program as such a program could create an influential advantage. The major benefits of knowledge continuity include protection of corporate mission-critical knowledge from being lost and provision of a planned outline and system so that knowledge can be accumulated, updated, accessed, enhanced, and transferred to employees even after the occurrence of a disastrous event (O'Sullivan, 2010).