Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan Overview

Our distributed nature as a company provides our best defense against local disasters. Having trained employees in separate locations allows us to recover from point failures in any location. Our production environment must also span multiple regions through true load balancing or fail over strategies.

The following action items must be in place for a successful execution of this plan.

1. Employees: 
   1. We must have people ready to work outside of the event radius. Being distributed solves this need. 
   2. Employees must be trained and have access to the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan to run the business.
   3. A clear chain of command will help the remaining team to get organized and execute this plan.
2. Operating Infrastructure:
   1. The company needs an online knowledge base(s) for redundant storage of company instructions.
   2. The production systems need to be automated to run without employee intervention.
   3. The production environment need to be located in multiple geographic regions.
      1. Server images, database backups, and application templates need to be locally available in each data center and periodically updated.
   4. Operating instructions need to be clear and easy to follow to non-technical employee to operate the business and for technical employees to recover and continue to deliver the service.
3. Finances:
   1. Financial records should be available online.
   2. Financial accounts should be held with a national chain with online account tools.
   3. Multiple employees should have access to the above records.
   4. Clear instructions for standard financial processes need to be in the company knowledge bases.

Testing and Plan Improvement

In order for this plan to be both effective and efficient regular testing and training must be performed. Employees must know and understand their roles and responsibilities before, during, and after a disrupting event. This knowledge is best gained through training and regular practice. Testing and training on this plan will occur at regular intervals not to exceed yearly.