Cissp Chapter 18

Front 1

What are the common types of natural disasters that may threaten an organization?

Back 1

Natural disasters that commonly threaten organizations include earthquakes, floods, storms, fires, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

Front 2

What are common types of man made disasters that may threaten an organization?

Back 2

Explosions, electrical fires, terrorist acts, power outages, other utility failures, infrastructure failures, hardware/ software failures, labor difficulties, theft, and vandalism are all common man-made disasters.

Front 3

What is a cold site?

Back 3

Cold sites are standby facilities large enough to handle the processing load of an organization and equipped with appropriate electrical and environmental support systems. They may be large warehouses, empty office buildings, or other similar structures.

However, a cold site has no computing facilities (hardware or software) pre-installed and also has no active broadband communications links.

Many cold sites do have at least a few copper telephone lines, and some sites may have standby links that can be activated with minimal notification.

Front 4

What is a warm site?

Back 4

Warm sites occupy the middle ground between hot and cold sites for disaster recovery specialists. They always contain the equipment and data circuits necessary to rapidly establish operations. As with hot sites, this equipment is usually pre-configured and ready to run appropriate applications to support an organization’s operations. Unlike hot sites, however, warm sites do not typically contain copies of the client’s data.

The main requirement in bringing a warm site to full operational status is the transportation of appropriate backup media to the site and restoration of critical data on the standby servers. Activation of a warm site typically takes at least 12 hours from the time a disaster is declared.

This does not mean that any site that can be activated in less than 12 hours qualifies as a hot site, however; switchover times for most hot sites are often measured in seconds or minutes, and complete cutovers seldom take more than an hour or two. Warm sites avoid significant telecommunications and personnel costs inherent in maintaining a near-real-time copy of the operational data environment.

As with hot sites and cold sites, warm sites may also be obtained on a shared facility basis. If you choose this option, be sure that you have a “no lockout” policy written into your contract guaranteeing you the use of an appropriate facility even during a period of high demand. It’s a good idea to take this concept one step further and physically inspect the facilities and the contractor’s operational plan to reassure yourself that the facility will indeed be able to back up the “no lockout” guarantee should push ever come to shove.

Front 5

What is a hot site?

Back 5

A hot site is the exact opposite of the cold site. In this configuration, a backup facility is maintained in constant working order, with a full complement of servers, workstations, and communications links ready to assume primary operations responsibilities. The servers and workstations are all preconfigured and loaded with appropriate operating system and application software.

The data on the primary site servers is periodically or continuously replicated to corresponding servers at the hot site, ensuring that the hot site has up-to-date data. Depending on the bandwidth available between the sites, hot site data may be replicated instantaneously. If that is the case, operators could move operations to the hot site at a moment’s notice. If it’s not the case, disaster recovery managers have three options to activate the hot site:

1. If there is sufficient time before the primary site must be shut down, they can force replication between the two sites right before the transition of operational control.

2.If replication is impossible, managers may carry backup tapes of the transaction logs from the primary site to the hot site and manually reapply any transactions that took place since the last replication.

3. If there are no available backups and it isn’t possible to force replication, the disaster recovery team may simply accept the loss of some portion of the data.

The advantages of a hot site are obvious— the level of disaster recovery protection provided by this type of site is unsurpassed. However, the cost is extremely high. Maintaining a hot site essentially doubles an organization’s budget for hardware, software, and services and requires the use of additional employees to maintain the site.

Front 6

What is a mobile site?

Back 6

Mobile sites are nonmainstream alternatives to traditional recovery sites. They typically consist of self-contained trailers or other easily relocated units. These sites include all the environmental control systems necessary to maintain a safe computing environment. Larger corporations sometimes maintain these sites on a “fly-away” basis, ready to deploy them to any operating location around the world via air, rail, sea, or surface transportation. Smaller firms might contract with a mobile site vendor in their local area to provide these services on an as-needed basis.

Front 7

What are service bureaus?

Back 7

A service bureau is a company that leases computer time. Service bureaus own large server farms and often fields of workstations. Any organization can purchase a contract from a service bureau to consume some portion of their processing capacity. Access can be on site or remote. A service bureau can usually provide support for all your IT needs in the event of a disaster— even desktops for workers to use. Your contract with a service bureau will often include testing and backups as well as response time and availability. However, service bureaus regularly oversell their actual capacity by gambling that not all their contracts will be exercised at the same time. Therefore, potential exists for resource contention in the wake of a major disaster. If your company operates in an industry-dense locale, this could be an important issue. You may need to select both a local and a distant service bureau to be sure to gain access to processing facilities during a real disaster.

Front 8

What are some potential benefits behind mutual assistance agreements as well as the reasons they are not commonly implemented in business today.

Back 8

Mutual assistance agreements (MAAs) provide an inexpensive alternative to disaster recovery sites, but they are not commonly used because they are difficult to enforce. Organizations participating in an MAA may also be shut down by the same disaster, and MAAs raise confidentiality concerns.

Front 9

Explain some technologies that may assist with database backup?

Back 9

Databases benefit from three backup technologies. Electronic vaulting is used to transfer database backups to a remote site as part of a bulk transfer. In remote journaling, data transfers occur on a more frequent basis. With remote mirroring technology, database transactions are mirrored at the backup site in real time.

Front 10

What is a read-through test for Disaster recovery?

Back 10

The read-through test is one of the simplest tests to conduct, but it’s also one of the most critical. In this test, you distribute copies of disaster recovery plans to the members of the disaster recovery team for review. This lets you accomplish three goals simultaneously:

1. It ensures that key personnel are aware of their responsibilities and have that knowledge refreshed periodically.

2.It provides individuals with an opportunity to review the plans for obsolete information and update any items that require modification because of changes within the organization.

3.In large organizations, it helps identify situations in which key personnel have left the company and nobody bothered to reassign their disaster recovery responsibilities. This is also a good reason why disaster recovery responsibilities should be included in job descriptions.

Front 11

What is a structured walk through test for Disaster recovery?

Back 11

A structured walk-through takes testing one step further. In this type of test, often referred to as a table-top exercise, members of the disaster recovery team gather in a large conference room and role-play a disaster scenario. Usually, the exact scenario is known only to the test moderator, who presents the details to the team at the meeting. The team members then refer to their copies of the disaster recovery plan and discuss the appropriate responses to that particular type of disaster.

Front 12

What is a simulation test for Disaster recovery?

Back 12

Simulation tests are similar to the structured walk-throughs. In simulation tests, disaster recovery team members are presented with a scenario and asked to develop an appropriate response. Unlike with the tests previously discussed, some of these response measures are then tested. This may involve the interruption of noncritical business activities and the use of some operational personnel.

Front 13

What is a parallel test for disaster recovery?

Back 13

Parallel tests represent the next level in testing and involve relocating personnel to the alternate recovery site and implementing site activation procedures. The employees relocated to the site perform their disaster recovery responsibilities just as they would for an actual disaster. The only difference is that operations at the main facility are not interrupted. That site retains full responsibility for conducting the day-to-day business of the organization.

Front 14

What is a full interruption test for Disaster recovery?

Back 14

Full-interruption tests operate like parallel tests, but they involve actually shutting down operations at the primary site and shifting them to the recovery site. For obvious reasons, full-interruption tests are extremely difficult to arrange, and you often encounter resistance from management.