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Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery for IT Professionals

Susan Snedaker

This volume does not pretend to be a comprehensive and detailed treatment of the subject. Indeed the reader looking for that sort of thing is referred elsewhere. (Alas, to nowhere specific; there are no references to other texts and no bibliography in this book.)

On the other hand, it does attempt to be both readable and practically useful. In my opinion it succeeds on both fronts. The writing style is engaging, and the print layout easy on the eye, such that the book can be read from cover to cover without the mind being numbed. Jargon is kept to a necessary minimum and is well explained where it is used. There is a good table of contents, supplemented by a fairly comprehensive index.

The title of the book aims it at IT professionals at all levels – from those at the coal face to executive and managerial staff. However this should not be interpreted as meaning that the book is full of technical detail – rather the opposite is the case. For example in the chapter 6 discussion on alternate sites, there is no mention of important considerations such as the minimum distance between the sites, or technological implications of sites very far apart. As a result, the book would be equally as useful to non-IT professionals!

Each chapter has a brief introduction, and concludes with a summary, a "Solutions Fast Track" section – basically a bullet-point summary, and some "Frequently Asked Questions" (with answers). It's possible to have your own questions answered by the author via a website. The chapters cover: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Overview; Project Initiation; Risk Assessment; Business Impact Analysis; Mitigation Strategy Development; BC/DR Plan Development; Emergency Response and Recovery; Training, Testing and Auditing; and BC/DR Plan Maintenance. The book finishes with 8 useful checklists. As an addition there are three case studies by other contributors.

Potential non-US readers should bear in mind that the text is focussed fairly and squarely on the United States of America. Thus there is a case study dealing with "Legal obligations regarding data security" which deals with data security breach laws in various states, and relevant US federal laws. No mention is made of legislation in other parts of the world. There are frequent references to "the country" obviously meaning the USA. This is perhaps a shame, but does not ultimately inhibit the usefulness of what is said.

The back cover refers to the new business continuity standard (BS 25999) released by the British Standards Institute in 2007 and now well recognized and in use globally, and the Disaster Recovery Institute's DRP/BCP certification. Alas, the book was written and published before either of these came into existence, so they are nowhere mentioned in the text. The book will give a firm introduction to good practice in the subject to a newcomer, but should not be seen as inspired by – or a guide to – any particular standard or certification. It may also be a useful read to those more experienced BCM practitioners, but as said at the outset, it does not pretend to be the definitive textbook on the subject.

Tim Wright CBCI
Kingston Smith Consulting