# IT- Disaster Recovery for a Business Continuity IT disaster recovery consists of developing step-by-step procedures for a full recovery, disaster avoidance and business continuity. When many think about DR, they usually think about Backup, while it is only one piece in BC-DR puzzle and inefficient for a continuity of business operations in an event of a disaster. **Backup is not disaster recovery (DR) based on following points:** - Failure of backup software - Service Levels: backups typically happen twice per day which means that a RTO will be significantly higher and RPO could be ~12 hours data loss which is not acceptable for critical applications in DR concept. - Reverse Replication: in an event of an outage, once an application has been made available on a target site, you must extend that application’s protection to include new data being created. A backup solution can not start taking backups and ship them back to a production site, yet a DR solution will ensure that an application is still protected by replicating back to a source site. - Application Impact: backups occur at night because, making a copy of an application and its data load a CPU on a server and impacts significantly end-user productivity.

Every institution large or small should have both a backup mechanism and disaster recovery solution in place; they are complementary pieces to a same puzzle.

#### Mitigation Measures For Some IT- Hazards
**POSSIBLE RISK** **MITIGATION MEASURE**
**DOWNTIME** • Hardware • Software • Redundancy • Maintenance and upgrade of software
**NETWORK** • Unreliable network • Loss of connectivity • Traffic • Misconfiguration • Design and monitor a network for a maximum reliability • Physical protection, Redundancy or diverse paths • Network segmentation • Installation of firewalls to ensure security • Load balancing (Intelligent direction to backup site) • Use automation to deploy changes, test all configurations in a lab environment before making changes on your production devices.
**DATA AND APPLICATION** • File corruption • Application downtime • Malicious software • Data backup • Mirroring of application, load balancing and replication • Security management and installation of antivirus
**EQUIPMENT FAILURES** • Server failure • Server Overload • Other Hardware • Old equipment • Redundant disks, Backups, SAN / NAS • Load balancer/Monitoring/virtualization • Regular maintenance • Planning for upgrades and replacing out-of-date equipment.
**POWER** • Power Outage • Equipment failure • Redundancy and backup power supply (UPS and Generators) • Monitoring and performing preventative maintenance regularly.
**ATTACKS** • DDoS • Viruses • Hackers • Other attacks • Managed security services/anti-DDoS • Installation of antivirus • Firewall and other security features • Access control system
**HUMAN ERROR** • File deletion • Unskilled people • Fire • Regular backup • Access management • Training / Staff certification requirements • Fire detection system, fire extinguisher and fire hydrant
#### Factors Influencing a Successful IT- Disaster Recovery **A. INFRASTRUCTURE** An infrastructure is a fundamental aspect which impacts and defines an output; an infrastructure condition or state should be well known in terms of network connectivity, quality, performance, processing capability and scalability. Considerations at infrastructure layer: - Before any hosting or connectivity, a required infrastructure including additional hardware and software especially needed for recovery and replication should be well defined and avoid single purpose infrastructure. - Same Infrastructure on both sites(Primary and Alternative site) - Availability of maintenance facilities **B. RTO AND RPO MEASUREMENT** RTO and RPO measurement should be based on a business impact analysis (BIA), conducted, that contain a classification and BIA matrix (criticality and priority level) of systems/Assets. *For critical systems RTO and RPO should be minimized to zero.* **C. REDUNDANCY AND BACKUP** Backups and redundancy are both infrastructure and data protection methods, but which can not be replaceable and should be applied at every layer. **Redundancy** is a data and system protection method considered as a real time fail prevention measure. **Backup** does not provide real-time protection, but by performing restoration for it provides a protection against greater loss.

Data and system backup should be done regularly and kept offsite.

**D. HIGH AVAILABILITY(HA)** HA is a disaster avoidance, a capability to automatically switch to alternative site without any downtime. HA is achieved by applying: - Clustering (mirroring of critical applications) - Replication of clusters - Load balancing in network which improves a HA by arranging multiple servers running simultaneously in primary and secondary order. - Redundancy should be fairly implemented and sufficient at every layer (network, storage, etc.). **E. LEVEL OF DISASTER RECOVERY SITES** **[![level.jpg](https://guidelines.risa.gov.rw/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/scaled-1680-/level.jpg)](https://guidelines.risa.gov.rw/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/level.jpg)** **F. REPLICATION SOLUTION** Replication for disaster recovery (DR) is no longer a “nice to have” technology, but a necessary part of every disaster recovery solution. **Replication Mode** **[![replication mode.jpg](https://guidelines.risa.gov.rw/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/scaled-1680-/replication-mode.jpg)](https://guidelines.risa.gov.rw/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/replication-mode.jpg)** **G. Virtualization** Software technique in which a single physical resource appears as multiple logical resources which reduce a data center complexity and improve restoration. With this solution you have fewer number of machine to manage, also server including operating systems, applications, patches, are all encapsulated into a single virtual server; hardware is virtual and completely separated from the actual, physical hardware in the host server, this separation and encapsulation allow redundancy and restoration, as a virtual server can be restored on another host if necessary. **H. Security System** Physical and cyber security system should be established. Refer to [Directive on cyber security for network and Information](https://www.risa.gov.rw/index.php?eID=dumpFile&t=f&f=65386&token=b8bec95ed9ef8a40ea58495336f9f4631ddcf30f) #### IT- Disaster Recovery Strategies [![Disaster Recover Strategies.jpg](https://guidelines.risa.gov.rw/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/scaled-1680-/disaster-recover-strategies.jpg)](https://guidelines.risa.gov.rw/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/disaster-recover-strategies.jpg) *Figure 4: IT disaster recovery strategies*

IT disaster recovery strategies encapsulate recovery solution at different layer

#### Disaster Recovery Phases The main phases for responding to a disaster are: - Deficiency/damage notification - Analysis and evaluation - Response and control of disaster (crisis management). - Site rehabilitation and returning business to operating normal level. - Documentation / Plan activation/update. To ensure long-term viability and effectiveness of Business Continuity Plan, organization should maintain, conduct, and document a business continuity testing, training program regularly. - Conducting a plan review at least quarterly - Conduct continuity awareness briefings or orientations for entire workforce - Train personnel on all reconstitution plans and procedures, recovery process. - Test and validate equipment monthly to ensure internal and external interoperability, test viability of communications, alerts, notifications systems - Test primary and backup infrastructure systems and services at primary and secondary recovery sites