Leadership at Local Power Company

¶ … Leadership at Local Power Company

Business Continuity Plan, Data Backup Approaches

The purpose of this memorandum is to highlight and outline the important procedures of a business continuity plan (BCP). Specifically, this report examines one aspect of a BCP: the recovery of sensitive information. This report is designed for large power and industrial companies that have a wide and extended influence on communities of people. This is a large scale approach to a large scale problem.

After discussing the background information on this topic, this report will introduce three different plan options to combat the problem at hand. These three options will include details on how to manage different types of threats and under varying environmental circumstances. This plan is not meant to be comprehensive, instead this piece of the solution is precisely aimed to help address the specific problem.

Problem Background

For companies operating in the utility and energy industries, not having a comprehensive business continuity plan isn't an option. Governed by strict regulations and standards, and the requirement to provide continual service to the millions of customers that depend on them, utility companies face stringent and continuously evolving business continuity challenges.

The events of 9/11, along with the flurry of computer viruses and other cyber attacks, have certainly forced organizations to take notice and focus more on business continuity and on protecting their data and intellectual property. Not surprisingly, this has translated into increased spending on business continuity, which has been one of the few bright spots in information technology spending since 9/11.

Option 1

Data backup can be performed in many different ways. One such way is to use a simple external hard drive that can physically store data. These options are cheap as one terabyte of storage will cost less than $100. This option is good, but requires constant maintenance and will not withstand damage from fires or flooding.

Option 2

Cloud storage and other online solutions offer the reassurance of a remote backup strategy that complements your local backup strategy. This is a burgeoning market and backup options and pricing vary. Depending on the storage and user needs, these service cost nearly $120 to $700 per year. Using web-based storage services to back up what you don't feel comfortable storing locally will also help to keep costs lowered.

Providers include Carbonite, Amazon S3, DropBox and Mozy. In addition to basic backup services, many offer various bells and whistles, including the option to access data from mobile devices, backup multiple PCs from one account, and share large files with teams. Another increasingly popular option is to build your own personal cloud with the help of a wireless network and sturdy storage devices currently available in the market.

Option 3