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Related Information

A disaster waiting to happen
HIPAA Standards
IT Recovery Efforts
Save Your Data

A disaster waiting to happen.

(most networks lack adequate disaster recovery protection)
(Industry Trend or Event)

Author/s: Sean Kelly
Issue: August, 2001

The majority of U.S. businesses may not have sufficient disaster recovery protection for their networks to deal with possible emergencies. Of 1,300 IT professionals recently surveyed by TechRepublic, Louisville, KY, 87% say their firms' IT systems lack the redundancies and/or protection in case of emergencies.

Mochal--director of internal development for an Atlanta software company says he observes large, midsize and small businesses taking different approaches to disaster recovery.

"Larger companies tend to be more rigorous in their ability to recover their business applications quickly," he notes. "Medium-size companies tend to focus on recovering their networks and files, and then assume they can also recover their business applications. Smaller companies that tend to use more shrink-wrapped applications probably tend to focus on server and disk backups, but they do not always think in terms of what they would do if a disaster hit," he adds.

"For instance, they may back up their data, but are they sending a copy of the backup off-site? The purpose of a disaster recovery plan is not to prevent the disaster," he concludes, "but to allow your business to recover in case a disaster hits."

HIPAA Standards

HIPAA will change all facets of information management :
Standards will improve security of patient records but should also streamline your operations.

Under the Administrative Simplification provisions of HIPAA, the Department of Health and Human Services is required to issue several regulations containing standards that are intended to simplify and streamline business operations of the health care delivery system. "I believe the unmistakable legacy of HIPAA will be to encourage computerization of all personal health information, regardless of who creates, stores, or transmits it. How else can providers meet HIPAA's exhaustive requirements to document all releases of information, produce audit trails, and be able to inform patients about who has accessed their medical information? The alternative to computerizing patients' medical information will be to maintain massive paper logs kept under lock and key.

© 2001 Advanstar Communications, Inc.
© 2001 Gale Group

IT recovery efforts forge ahead

Author/s: Eugene Grygo
Issue: Sept 17, 2001

According to Johnson, only 10 percent of all applications -- usually the critical ones -- are covered, while the distributed applications and platforms that are also essential to business get short shrift when it comes to disaster planning. Financial institutions need high-availability disaster recovery that includes coverage of front-end, midlevel, and back-end systems, said Michael Flynn, an analyst at Meta Group in Stamford, Conn.

Save Your Data

Author/s: Adam C. Engst
Issue: Sept, 2001

Design a Fail-safe Backup Strategy Before Disaster Strikes

YOU'RE ALMOST DONE WITH AN IMPORTANT PROJECT
That's when whatever can go wrong does go wrong. The panic starts deep in your stomach as your screen freezes. You realize how much work you've just lost--and how much more work you'll have to do to get it back.

Sound familiar? No matter how careful you are, sooner or later you're guaranteed to lose data. I once managed to overwrite a client's entire database with a text file. If I had backed that Mac up regularly, I could have enjoyed my weekend. Instead, I had to spend hours and hours recovering the database.

For example, after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, many businesses weren't allowed back into the building for weeks, not even to retrieve backups. Companies with offsite backups were able to buy or lease new computers, restore data from their off-site backup sets, and keep working in temporary offices. Some businesses that didn't have off-site backups went bankrupt.