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Disaster Plan Maurice R Merrell IT 240 – Intro To LAN Technologies 4/9/12 David Lindsey Having a disaster recovery plan for 123 Textile Corporation that operates in a high- risk area that is located in a high-crime area in which has frequent earthquakes will better protect the organization's technological assets. The server for this company is currently installed next to a window where it should be an apparent security issue in itself. The company recently experienced a break-in during the last earthquake, which knocked out power to this section of the city. This earthquake and crime resulted in property vandalism and theft of the company server. The 123 Textile Corporation backs up their data once a month to an external hard drive. All data that relates to the companies backbone or essential data needs to be backed up once a week between the hours of midnight and 0700 so that it will not affect productivity. [pic]The company's customer service data will be backed up daily at alternating days either even number days or odd number days. There are programs that will allow for updates periodically throughout a day. Throw in that occasional earthquake with the crime committed makes for the 123 Textile Corporations in desperate need of a well-planned disaster recovery plan. When addressing a disaster plan, the first step should be is to Perform Risk Assessment: A business impact and risk analysis impact assessment should be conducted by the companies IMO, which includes the scenarios for both natural and man- made disasters, both natural and man- made can be caused by hardware failure, viruses and weather. By conducting an analysis of the aftermath and impact in disaster scenarios, the security of important and crucial data can be implemented. In the case for 123 Textile Corporation it was the stolen server, the new server should be located in a more secure area and located either on the first or second floor due to flooding, it should be located in a room with no windows and the door should have a cipher lock which make for a more secure and safe place to protect this organization's technological assets. For instance, if the servers are behind a secure cipher locked door and installed in an APC rack with key locks and anchored to the floor would detour most thieves. Lockable equipment racks are available from multiple companies ranging in price and size whereas optimal protection against shock and falling objects is obtained by purchasing a metal rack. Having the servers secured by either, a rack or in a locked server room will provide more security than that of having it in the open near a window. The server would then reside behind a solid door with a dead bolt. Anyone who requires access to the server would require a key and a password, which the supervisor or higher and the network administrator will have possession of. With the Having a disaster recovery plan for 123 Textile Corporation that operates in a high-risk area that is located in a high-crime area in which has frequent earthquakes will better protect the organization's technological assets. Steel racks, password, and keyed entry this would provide as much protection against data being lost, stolen, or damaged than that of before. The CISCO servers will also need a UPS (uninterruptable power source) to ensure the security of the data. The power supply is generally connected to several servers and protects against power surges, lightning strikes, electrical outage or blackouts. A local certified electrician or the electric company’s service provider can install a small low cost back-up electrical generator that will allow the server to continue running for a short period. These generators will turn on automatically when a power failure should arise. Although most of the small generators are not designed to provide power support for long periods of time however they will allow enough time for the network administrators to backup the data and power down a server normally to [pic] ensure proper working condition when the normal power supply is restored. Electrical issue are the number one cause of corrupted files, loss of data and permanent server hard drive that can be detrimental to the company when not backed up properly. There are several arrays of cheap disks or RAID servers that can provide a simple solution if any of the hard drives failed. RAID, an acronym for (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) it is a category of disk drive that employs two or more drives in combination for fault tolerance and performance. RAID disk drives are used frequently on servers but aren’t generally necessary for individual personal computers. I would use a RAID system to make sure no data is lost and to recover data from failed disk drives without shutting the system down. When setting up the RAID system I would configure it so that several hard drives backup the data this allows for faster performance since several drives can be accessed by different employees the data will be written and read as services are requested. 123 Textile Corporation is located in RAID 1. In RAID two or more hard drives has duplicate data which makes the system redundant. If a hard drive fails the other drive will maintain the system or network data until the issue is resolved or the bad hard drive replaced. The RAID disk controllers provide functions that can take a bad hard drive off the network, run scan disk and either rewrites the data by either reformatting or repair the bad hard drive. The 123 Textile Corporation’s critical data as it pertaining to each department must be reviewed with respect to the amount of data, services provided, their documentation process, overall operations, critical equipment, and the policies and procedures that are in place. I would categorize and ordered based on department priority. as Critical, Important, and Non-critical. I would recommend a rack mount system called the R210 from CISCO. The [pic] Cisco R210-SASXP-CNFGW Server Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers extend unified computing innovations to an industry-standard form factor to help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. Designed to operate both in standalone environments and as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System, the series employs Cisco technology to help customers handle the most challenging workloads. The series incorporates a standards-based unified network fabric and Cisco VN-Link virtualization and protects customer investments with a future migration path to unified computing. It has a Gigabit Ethernet IEEE 802.3ab, the controller is 8-channel 512 MB Serial Attached SCSI RAID Controller supporting 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60 RAID Level, it comes with the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) 2.0 and Server Engines Pilot-2 Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). A data cable is used to interface the SATA host controller card and the enclosure to manage the hard drives. This set up is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux OS. It ranges around $1,500 50 $2,500 depending on storage size (CISCO, 2011). The generally accepted methods of a tape backup drive and cassettes have alternatives with many companies offer off-site server backup. These sites referred to commonly as hot sites and cold sites, depending on personnel are located at the facility and what the site offers. A cold site is a type of disaster recovery service that provides office space, but the customer provides and installs all the equipment needed to continue operations. A cold site is less expensive, but it takes longer to get an enterprise in full operation after the disaster. A cold site does not provide the customer with backup copies of information or data within the original location of 123 Textile Corporation, it does not include hardware which provides the company with minimal startup costs. It requires additional manpower, equipment and time following a disaster to have normal operational services up and running at a capacity close to that prior to the outage or disaster. [pic] The [pic]more expensive of the two is the hot site. A hot site is a commercial disaster recovery service which provides a duplicate of the data from the original site of 123 Textile Corporation that allows a business to continue computer and network operations in a mirrored environment in the event of a computer or equipment disaster. For example, if an thief or flood causes the enterprise's data center to become inoperable, that enterprise can move all data processing operations to a hot site. A hot site has all the equipment needed for the enterprise to continue operation, including office space and furniture, phones, printers and computer terminals. [pic] [pic]Hot sites are popular with organizations that operate real time processes such as financial institutions, government agencies and ecommerce providers. IBackup is [pic]a company that [pic]offers solutions to implement hot sites based disaster recovery even for small to medium sized businesses. 123 Textile Corporation [pic]can setup an office to another branch office or even to the network administrator's home [pic]hot sites solution. IBackup mirrors data between two sites, for any quantum of data, executed at frequency levels set by the company. This company's plans start about $9.95 a month depending on the service needed. When the hardware [pic]requirements of the disaster recovery plan are in place, the security software is ready to be implemented. Standard [pic]security software includes [pic]a firewall and antivirus program. A [pic]firewall is used [pic]to keep unauthorized users from gaining access to the network's resources, data, computers, servers, [pic]and programs. An antivirus program [pic]will help ensure viruses and malware cannot make a home on the network and possibly compromise the network's security. There are many antivirus programs available to the consumers such as McAfee and Norton. Both of them are reasonable in cost around $100. 123 Textile Corporation [pic]operates in a high crime area of the country. [pic]To minimize losses incurred from crimes, a security system that includes alarms, cameras, emergency lighting, and a notification system to the fire and police departments, also having the owner or administrators notified. This security system alarm will sound when someone enters the building without deactivating the alarm. [pic]Alarms are available that can sound even [pic]when windows are broken, if there is a fire, flood, or any of disaster. Having cameras in select areas of the building will also help indentify anyone that breaks in. Many cameras also have video surveillance features. These cameras can [pic]be tied into the server and their video surveillance data backed up along with the rest of the company's data. Surveillance video could prove useful in recovering lost, stolen, or damaged data or items resulting from vandalism or disasters. When the security of the network is in place, the network administrator will implement passwords, usernames, and security levels on the network (data and program access). [pic]The network administrator will be responsible for determining how much of the 123 Textile Corporations [pic]data needs backed up, how often the [pic]backup will take place, and who is responsible for completing the backup. The administrator may set restrictions on user names and passwords that may [pic]include a minimum character length and [pic]/or a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers or symbols. An example user name and password may be 123TeXtIle (username) and SeCuRitY123 (password). Passwords should be set to expire and reset every so often to help minimize the risk of hackers obtaining them. Social engineering can also present a threat to a networks security, telephone users should not give out anyone's last names including theirs, unless they are certain the person on the other end is a reliable source and they are secure. Passwords and usernames are to remain unknown by everyone except the supervisor and network administrator. No employee shall give their information to anyone since the supervisor and network administrator already have them through a security feature. A password- protected screensavers can be implemented in the event that a workstation is left abandoned and idle. These screensavers can be set to as little as 30 second's idle time before the password needs reentered. With these new features in place 123 Textile Corporation can ensure that their new network will be more secure and reliable for future use is some other disaster may happen. Conclusion In conclusion, the terror attacks of 911 caused large-scale network outages, the affected systems were down because of destroyed fiber optic cable, servers, and switches. The loss of voice capability and unable to access mainframes that were located in the towers impacted many Wall Street firms. Recently we witnessed the effect that an earthquake that happened in Japan, destroying much of the countries data and will continue to damage their Nuclear Power Plants. Reference www.CISCO.com Regan, Patrick; Local Area Networks, Published by Prentice-Hall. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education, Inc.