The top four causes of IT downtime are failures of hardware, networks, power supplies, and applications. Most of the time, these man-made problems can be controlled or fixed quickly. But what about acts of nature – earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, fires, abnormal heat waves, and more – that have dominated recent headlines? These types of disasters can cause near-fatal system failures if you do not have an established and working plan for recovery. Your systems can be down for days, weeks, or even months at a time while you try to rebuild or, at worst, start over. With these thoughts in mind, it is of paramount importance that IT decision makers within financial enterprises consider integrated disaster recovery and data backup features when selecting a provider of middle- and back-office systems or services.

Achieving minimal system downtime is not as difficult as it may seem. In fact, creating a simple disaster recovery plan before a problem occurs is the best way to ensure minimal system downtime in the event of an emergency. When creating a disaster recovery plan, work with your system/service provider to address three key items: prevention, anticipation, and mitigation.

Preventing System Downtime

The first thing any IT professional should do to reduce system downtime is to try to prevent potentially catastrophic events from occurring. Ensure that all of your systems, or at the very least your key systems, are secure and reliable. You may think you are doing enough by backing up your data, but if your system is not secure enough to protect against hackers and information thieves, for example, data back-ups become secondary.

When considering system downtime prevention measures, use the following guidelines:

• Configure all your systems to tested standards. Do not use software that is outdated and/or no longer supported by providers.
• Apply software patches and bug fixes on a regular basis.
• Monitor systems regularly to ensure proper performance and storage capacities. If you have been saving your data on a dysfunctional server, it is not going to help you when you need it.
• Use virus prevention and detection tools. It is a lot easier, and cheaper, to prevent a virus than try to fix one once it enters your system.
• Provide a backup power supply and surge protectors.
• Configure critical systems with built-in redundancies. Save important data in more than one place automatically.

While it is impossible to prevent all IT disasters, many can be avoided by planning ahead. Rely on the expertise and experience of your internal IT personnel and your external financial system/service providers to take precautionary and backup measures.

Anticipating System Downtime

The second part of a quality disaster recovery plan involves anticipating what could go wrong if a disaster occurred. Not every company is going to experience every type of disaster, so if you are located in a land-locked area, for example, you should not be focusing your attention on how to protect yourself from a tsunami. When creating a plan for dealing with the disasters most likely to occur in your area, remember the following strategies:

• Identify potential disaster scenarios – What could go wrong if your office were flooded or without power for two weeks?
• Quantify probabilities – What is the likelihood that these types of disasters could occur in your office?
• Articulate consequences – What is the impact that water-logged computers would have on your business?

By anticipating the worst case scenarios for a disaster, you can be prepared to deal with whatever may happen.

Mitigating System Downtime

The third part of a successful disaster recovery plan is implementing steps to manage and minimize the negative impact a disaster could have on your business. These steps cover the actions to take if a disaster occurs, but they cannot be fully enacted without first creating prevention and anticipation plans. Remember, it is important to first understand the potential problems before attempting to create solutions. Some mitigation strategies include:

• Use an off-site systems hosting facility as an alternate data center that can be brought online in the event of an emergency that affects your normal IT operations center.
• Have spare equipment readily available. If something breaks, have an extra so your system is not down while another one ships.
• Make scheduled backups and store them off site. It is very important to back up your data in case it gets deleted or someone makes a mistake and you need to roll back to a previous day. Backups should be kept in a safe location that will not be affected by the same disasters as your local copy.
• Maintain technical documentation to facilitate recovery. No disaster recovery plan would be complete without documents explaining how to get it done. You may think that restoring backup data or restarting a server is easy for IT to do, but when the department is inflicted with the drama of a traumatic disaster, which may include limited personnel, it helps to have detailed steps to follow.
• Conduct regular tests. There is nothing more important than making sure your disaster recovery plan works. You can have all the best disaster recovery gurus create your plan, but if you do not take the time to test it regularly, you will never know if the spare equipment works, how long it takes to restore backup data to a system, or if you even have enough personnel to make the process flow smoothly. As an example, in 2005, sixty-two firms and financial infrastructure providers in London, England decided to test their ability to recover from a catastrophic disaster similar to the mass transit attacks that occurred earlier that year. For many, the test was a wake-up call for how they were or were not prepared to deal with a disaster. After receiving feedback from the British Financial Services Authority, the same firms were re-tested in 2008 and showed significant improvement in their preparedness. Almost all the businesses could recover 80-100% of their work by the close of business.

Conclusion

Disaster recovery and data backup features that are integrated into your financial systems and services allow you to prevent, anticipate, and mitigate system downtime. Rather than relying solely on your internal IT department to create, test, and maintain disaster recovery and data backup policies and procedures, use the guidance and tools of your software and service providers. With select few software and service providers offering quality disaster recovery and data backup plans and utilities, it is imperative to adequately research a provider’s commitment to disaster recovery prior to making any purchases.

About QED Financial Systems

Based in Marlton New Jersey, QED Financial Systems is a unique provider of a totally integrated portfolio accounting system solution to the public and private sectors. A small, privately owned company, QED carefully selects the organizations they choose to partner with and then provides an extraordinary degree of initial and ongoing service. As a result of this, QED has a 100% referenceable client base that is the envy of its industry. QED's clients account for approximately $1 Trillion in assets managed, with its largest single client managing approximately $180 Billion.

QED Financial Systems Offers Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Services

QED Financial Systems recognizes that recovering from or even avoiding a service disruption, whether a component failure or a full-site disaster, depends on an effective contingency and business recovery planning process, combined with experienced people to execute the plan. QED offers comprehensive disaster recovery and data backup services to get clients up and running as quickly as possible after an emergency.

About the Author

Laura Castle is a technical documentation specialist with QED Financial Systems. Working previously with Prudential Financial, Ms. Castle is experienced with creating sophisticated financial documentation, including online help systems, technical manuals, marketing pieces,training guides, and web sites.