CSE 2025-Business Continuity and

Risk Analysis
Module1-Sources of disaster and types of disasters
Disaster Recovery Operational cycle of disaster
recovery, disaster recovery cost, incidents that
requires disaster recovery plans, evaluating disaster
recovery - methods, team, phases, objectives,
checklist. Best practices for disaster recovery -
Business continuity - Business continuity vs. disaster
recovery
What is mean by disaster?
Disaster, any natural or human-generated
calamitous event that produces great loss
of human life or destruction of the
natural environment, private property, or
public infrastructure.
A disaster may be relatively sudden, such as
an earthquake or an oil spill, or it may unfold
over a longer period, such as the effects of an
ongoing pandemic or climatic disruption.

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What is mean by disaster?
Severe droughts, wildfires, floods, landslides,
and volcanic eruptions are often considered examples of
natural disasters.
Large industrial accidents, building collapses, high-rise
fires, airliner crashes, ship sinkings, and acts
of terrorism are frequently classified as human-caused
disasters.
The term may also be used to describe other events, such
as the displacement of large populations as a result
of war.

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What is mean by disaster?
Disasters can lead to the following:
• Loss of life: This is the most damaging and traumatic impact
of any disaster. Individuals may lose their family members and
colleagues, whereas organizations may lose their key
personnel. Disasters often leave many with temporary and
permanent disabilities. Epidemics after disasters leave many
more people with diseases that affect their employability and
economic conditions.
• Loss of property: Property loss is a consequence of many
disasters. Disasters leave man-made structures collapsed and
ruin necessary services such as communication and
transportation systems.

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What is mean by disaster?
• Relocation or displacement: Individuals or organizations
may, at times, need to shift or completely relocate to a new
site.
• Disruptions in business continuity: Disasters may cause
disruptions in business activities due to failure in processes,
machinery, and communication, and these disruptions
ultimately result in loss of revenue or cessation of all business
activity and closure.

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Types of Disasters
• Natural disaster
• A natural disaster is described as a major event
caused by Earth’s natural processes that result in
significant environmental harm and loss of life.

• The term natural has consequently been disputed

because the events simply are not hazards or
disasters without human involvement.

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Types of Disasters
• Natural disaster
• Different types of natural disasters can be:
• Tsunamis
• Earthquakes
• Avalanches
• Volcanoes
• Landslides
• Floods
• Droughts
• Forest fires
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Types of Disasters
• Man-made disasters
• Human-induced disasters are very dangerous
catastrophes caused by humans. They are caused by
human activity. The following are the examples:
• Chemical spills, hazardous material spills,
explosives, chemical or biological attacks, nuclear
blasts, rail accidents, airline crashes, or groundwater
poisoning are all instances of man-made disasters.

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Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery involves the processes, policies, and
procedures necessary for the recovery of operations and the
continuation of the critical functions of an organization after a
disaster.
Disaster recovery is important to organizations for the
following reasons:
•It returns the organizations to normal operating conditions.

• It limits the effects of the disaster on business functions It

minimizes the occurrence of certain types of disasters in the
future

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Disaster Recovery
• What is a disaster recovery (DR) plan?

Develop a disaster recovery plan that boosts your

cyber resilience and recovery capability

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How does a disaster recovery (DR)
plan work?
• A disaster recovery (DR) plan is a formal document
created by an organization that contains detailed
instructions on how to respond to unplanned
incidents such as natural disasters, power
outages, cyber attacks and any other disruptive
events.
• The plan contains strategies on minimizing the
effects of a disaster, so an organization will continue
to operate – or quickly resume key operations.

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• Disruptions can lead to lost revenue, brand damage
and dissatisfied customers. And, the longer the
recovery time, the greater the adverse business
impact.
• Therefore, a good disaster recovery plan should
enable rapid recovery from disruptions, regardless
of the source of the disruption.
• Support business continuity with cloud disaster
recovery within minutes of an outage with Disaster
recovery as a service (DRaaS)

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Why is a DR plan important?
• To minimize interruptions to normal operations.
• To limit the extent of disruption and damage.
• To minimize the economic impact of the
interruption.
• To establish alternative means of operation in
advance.
• To train personnel with emergency procedures.
• To provide for smooth and rapid restoration of
service.

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Disaster Recovery Team
• A disaster recovery team is responsible for
developing and managing disaster recovery
operations and procedures.
• The team includes representatives from different
departments and third-party associates of the
organization. The members of the team have
predefined roles and responsibilities in different
stages of the disaster recovery process.
• All departments in an organization—such as
management, human resources, IT, customer service
centers, security, and finance—should be adequately
represented in the disaster recovery team.

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The major roles and responsibilities of disaster
recovery teams
• Developing, deploying, and monitoring the
implementation of appropriate disaster recovery
plans after analysis of business objectives and
threats to organizations
• Notifying management, affected personnel, and
third parties about the disaster
• Initiating the execution of the disaster recovery
procedures
• Monitoring the execution of the disaster recovery
plan and assessing the results

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The major roles and responsibilities of disaster
recovery teams
• Returning operations to normal conditions
Modifying and updating the disaster recovery plan
according to lessons learned from previous disaster
recovery efforts
• Increasing the level of the organization’s disaster
recovery preparedness by conducting mock drills,
regular DR systems testing, and threat analysis
• Creating awareness among various stakeholders of
the organization by conducting training and
awareness sessions

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 Disaster Recovery Objectives
The following are the three different types of
objectives for the disaster recovery process:
1. Short-term recovery objectives: After the
occurrence of an emergency, the first few hours
and days are spent restoring the required structural
(facilities) and nonstructural (power, water,
sanitation, telecommunications, etc.) functions.
The DR team should provide the direction and the
required operational support to achieve and
manage these objectives.
2. Medium-term recovery objectives: During the
first weeks after an emergency event, the primary
goal is to restore all the preidentified business
functions that are found to be critical to normal 19
business operations.
Disaster Recovery Objectives
3. Long-term recovery objectives: The main
objective of a DR effort is to resume normal
operations. The long-term objectives focus on the
resumption of operations to predisaster conditions. A
long-term recovery team may be employed to consider
and coordinate strategic planning for long-term
recovery efforts. The timeline to restore to normal
operations is dependent on the level of the disrupted
critical services. In case of a major disaster, the
recovery efforts can last for months or even years.

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Operational Cycle of Disaster Recovery
• The main processes that form the complete DR Life Cycle
encompass the the 6 Rs’ is referred to as the DR Life Cycle.
•

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Operational Cycle of Disaster Recovery

Reduce

•Minimize, avoid or prevent the threats

from occurring

•Prepare and exercise DR plan

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Operational Cycle of Disaster Recovery
Response
•Detection:
• Detect a disaster event when it happens
•Notification:
• Notify the core DR team for initial assessments and
verifying whether a disaster has happened
•Damage Assessment:
• Assess the degree of damages done and deciding on
activation of DR Plan
•Plan Activation:
• Activate the execution of the DR Plan

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Operational Cycle of Disaster Recovery
•Disaster Declaration:
• Upon decision to declare a disaster, the Disaster Declaration
Officer will contact the recovery center to declare disaster
• Check and confirm subscribed resources are make available
• Activate specialized DR Team to be on on-site and standby
• Confirm time to access the recovery center
•Team Mobilization:
• Notification Call-Tree
• Activate all team members to assemble at designated assembly
center or alternate sites
• Retrieve vital records from offsite storage
• Activate key support vendors
• Inform relevant parties

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Operational Cycle of Disaster Recovery
Recover
•Execute the recovery procedures and recovering the
business operation at a temporary site
•Travel to Recovery Centre:
•Ensure that all team members need to be familiar with
the location of the recovery center
•Consider validity of travel documents and work permit or
VISA to enter another country for support to overseas
offices

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Operational Cycle of Disaster Recovery
• Re-sync
•Re-synchronize Data
•Input data captured during manual business operations
•Perform audit check of data entered
• Resume
•Test critical components of each application as per DR Plan
•Verify that the correct data are restored by Development or
Application team
•Perform audit on the readiness & integrity of data & security
•Authorize data to be released for production

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Operational Cycle of Disaster Recovery
• Return
•Reconstruct the original site or acquire a new permanent site to
return to the normal business operations
•Prepare primary site
•Equipment replacement or relocation
•Re-establish telecommunication
•Restore systems, network, and application.
•Conduct a parallel run to ensure system at primary site is
stabilized
•Before cut-over to primary site from recovery center,
•Review of IT ends users and auditors
•Request recovery center to standby for at least one day after
cutover to serve as backup

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A sample template to use when you create a
disaster
• Step 1: recovery planThe first step is to broadly
Major goals
outline the major goals of a disaster recovery plan.
• Step 2: Personnel Record your data processing
personnel. Include a copy of the organization chart
with your plan.
• Step 3: Application profile List applications and
whether they are critical and if they are a fixed
asset.

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Steps
• Step 4: Inventory profile List the manufacturer, model, serial number,
cost and whether each item is owned or leased.
• Step 5: Information services backup procedures
• Step 6: Disaster recovery procedures For any DR plan, these three
elements should be addressed:
Emergency response procedures to document the appropriate emergency
response to a fire, natural disaster, or any other activities in order to protect
lives and limit damages.
Backup operations procedures to ensure that essential data processing
operational tasks can be conducted after the disruption.
Recovery actions procedures to facilitate the rapid restoration of a data
processing system following a disaster.

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Steps
• Step 7: DR plan for mobile site The plan should include a mobile site
setup plan, a communication disaster plan (including the wiring
diagrams) and an electrical service diagram.
• Step 8: DR plan for hot site An alternate hot site plan should provide
for an alternative (backup) site. The alternate site has a backup system
for temporary use while the home site is being reestablished.
• Step 9: Restoring the entire system To get your system back to the way
it was before the disaster, use the procedures on recovering after a
complete system loss in Systems management: Backup and recovery.

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• Step 10: Rebuilding process The management team must assess the
damage and begin the reconstruction of a new data center.
• Step 11: Testing the disaster recovery and cyber recovery plan In
successful contingency planning, it is important to test and evaluate the
DR plan regularly. Data processing operations are volatile in nature,
resulting in frequent changes to equipment, programs and
documentation. These actions make it critical to consider the plan as a
changing document.
• Step 12: Disaster site rebuilding This step should include a floor plan of
the data center, the current hardware needs and possible alternatives – as
well as the data center square footage, power requirements and security
requirements.
• Step 13: Record of plan changes Keep your DR plan current. Keep
records of changes to your configuration, your applications and your
backup schedules and procedures.
• Disaster recovery plan - IBM Documentation

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• Hot Site:
• A hot site is a fully equipped and operational off-site facility that is ready to take
over the primary business functions in case of a disaster.
• It typically replicates the primary site's computing environment, including
hardware, software, data, and network infrastructure.
• The hot site is continuously synchronized with the primary site to ensure that the
most up-to-date data and applications are available in the event of a disaster.
• Mobile Site:
• A mobile site, on the other hand, is a more portable and flexible solution.
• It involves having pre-configured resources, such as servers, communication
equipment, and other necessary infrastructure, stored in a movable location.
• Unlike a hot site, a mobile site is not necessarily a duplicate of the primary site but
rather a collection of critical resources that can be quickly deployed to a new
location as needed.

BACK

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Disaster Recovery cost
• "The cost of disaster recovery can vary significantly
depending on a number of factors, including the
type and severity of the disaster, the size and
complexity of the organization, the extent of the
damage, and the nature of the recovery efforts
needed.
• The cost of disaster recovery can include both direct
and indirect expenses, such as:

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Cost
• Infrastructure costs: This includes the cost of
replacing or repairing damaged equipment, data
centers, and facilities.
• Data recovery costs: This includes the cost of
retrieving lost or damaged data, such as backup and
recovery solutions.
• Business interruption costs: This includes the cost
of lost productivity and revenue due to the disaster.

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Cost
• Labor costs: This includes the cost of hiring
additional staff or outsourcing recovery efforts.
• Insurance premiums: This includes the cost of
insurance coverage for potential disasters.
• Testing and maintenance costs: This includes the
cost of testing disaster recovery plans and
conducting maintenance on equipment and
infrastructure.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• As disaster and emergency managers, we always
have to plan for the unexpected. In this regard, it is
always important to understand what a disaster is
and what qualifies as a hazard in order to react
accordingly.
• A low magnitude earthquake in the East African
region in 2019 was a natural hazard but it was not a
disaster. The intensity of the earthquake was very
low and did not have any impact on people or
property.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• In contrast, the cyclone Udai in Zimbabwe and
Mozambique, a natural hazard escalated into a
disaster with high loss of life and property.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• Disasters and emergencies happen after an
interaction between a hazard and a vulnerable
population that disrupts lives and communities.
• Due to this, we always evaluate disasters in terms of
their intensity, location, scale, and the extent to
which they are human-made or ‘natural’ and the
vulnerability of the population affected.
• Of key importance, after a disaster, the efficiency of
the after response is usually critical to the recovery
of the affected community.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• When the response is well coordinated and touches
on the key needs of the community focusing on
rebuilding with locally available resources the
population bounces back fast.
• Our task, as we focus on quick disaster recovery, is
to find the most efficient manner to handle a
disaster and it’s aftermath. For this to be possible,
Monitoring and Evaluation plays a key role in the
process.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) as a process
provides key:
• guidance on future intervention activities;
• information on what an intervention is doing, how
well it is performing and whether it is achieving its
aims and objectives;

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• Monitoring is the regular collection of information
about all project activities. It shows whether
things are going according to plan and helps
project managers to identify and solve problems
and or issues identified in a prompt manner.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• On the other hand, Evaluation seeks to determine
whether a project is achieving what it set out to do
and whether it is making a previously projected
impact.
• If the set objective is being achieved, the evaluation
seeks to understand how and why the intervention
has worked so well. If the project is unsuccessful,
questions are raised as to what could have been
done better or differently.
• Evaluations’ main purpose is to keep track of key
outcomes and impacts related to the different
project components, assessing whether the
objectives, aims and goals are being achieved.
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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• In disaster recovery, we need a Monitoring
and
Evaluation Framework to ensure the programs
being implemented are evaluated to gauge their
effectiveness.

• By improving the quality of evaluations, it makes it

possible to improve subsequent disaster recovery
programs. The learning we obtain from these
evaluations is incorporated into program design and
delivery.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
Regular and planned monitoring of disaster recovery
outcomes helps ensure:
• Programs are modified to cater to emerging needs
• Available resources can are redirected to other areas
of need as earlier targets are achieved
• An early warning system is set up to identify non-
performing programs.
• Progress toward successful recovery is
communicated to the community and other relevant
stakeholders
• All the groups involved in the delivery of recovery
programs are accountable for their respective
performance. 44
Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
• Evaluation report findings should be presented in a
way that is suitable for the intended audience
particularly if the audience is inclusive of the
affected community. A balance needs to be struck
between the accessibility of these findings to the
affected communities and to the broader public, and
the need to be sufficiently comprehensive to inform
decision-making.

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Monitoring and Evaluating
Disaster Recovery
Therefore an evaluation report itself should include:
• A comparison of attained results with other similar
recovery programs.
• Biases discovered that could limit the scope of the
evaluation
• Alternative results proposal with evaluations on how
external factors contributed to the overall recovery
program
• Positive and negative consequences discovered on
the cause of the evaluation process
• a discussion of the extent to which the different data
collection methods lead to similar results and a
discussion of any differences. 46
Check list
• "A disaster recovery plan is essential for organizations to minimize the
impact of a disaster on their operations. Below is a checklist of items
that can be included in a disaster recovery plan:
• Identify potential disasters: Identify the types of disasters that could
impact your organization, such as natural disasters, cyber attacks, or
equipment failures.
• Define recovery objectives: Determine the objectives for your disaster
recovery plan, such as minimizing downtime, restoring critical systems,
and ensuring the safety of employees and customers.

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Check list
• Assign responsibilities: Define the roles and responsibilities
of the individuals involved in the disaster recovery plan,
including the disaster recovery team, IT personnel, and
external vendors.
• Backup critical data: Develop a plan to regularly backup
all critical data, and store backups off-site or in the cloud.
• Define recovery procedures: Develop procedures for
recovering critical systems, applications, and data in the
event of a disaster.
• Test the plan: Regularly test the disaster recovery plan to
ensure that it is effective and up-to-date.

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Check List
• Define communication procedures: Develop procedures for
communicating with employees, customers, and vendors during a
disaster.
• Prepare a disaster recovery kit: Prepare a disaster recovery kit that
includes items such as backup media, recovery software, and emergency
contact information.
• Develop a recovery location: Identify and prepare an alternate location
for operations in the event that the primary location is inaccessible.
• Train employees: Train employees on the disaster recovery plan and
their roles and responsibilities in the event of a disaster.

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Eight best practices for IT disaster recovery

1. Empower your staff. Dedicate a department within IT to

manage business continuity planning and disaster recovery.
2. Divide and conquer. To ensure business involvement, some
CIOs separate business continuity planning and disaster
recovery into two initiatives, each with its own governance
and goals.
3. Make sure the plan can stand alone. Develop a plan that
will work with or without the people who created it.
4. Challenge the business. Request that individuals think
about how long they really go without a particular application.

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Eight best practices for IT disaster recovery

5. Align disaster recovery with application development.

6. Test your crisis management team with mock disasters.
Tabletop tests won’t cut it.
7. Try before you buy. Test products and new technologies,
before you purchase.
8. Hold postmortems and adjust. What you do with the
results of the test is a critical part of disaster recovery
planning.

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How is a disaster recovery (DR) plan used in industry?-(CASE
STUDY)
• Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) was faced with that harsh reality when a
5.8 magnitude earthquake struck in 2016.
• Since the company’s backup center was located near headquarters in
Ulsan City, Korea, the earthquake served as a wake-up call for HHI to
examine its disaster recovery systems and determine preparedness for a
full range of potential disruption.
• In 2016 an earthquake showed just how close a natural disaster could
come to damaging Hyundai's mission critical IT infrastructure.
• The IT leadership responded quickly, working with IBM Business
Resiliency Services to implement a robust disaster recovery solution with
a remote data center.

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 Uttarakhand Flash Floods (2013):
• Disaster: Flash floods and landslides in June 2013
severely impacted the state of Uttarakhand.
Thousands of people were stranded, and
infrastructure, including roads and bridges, was
damaged.
• Recovery Plan:
• Search and Rescue: Immediate efforts focused on search
and rescue operations to evacuate stranded individuals
and provide medical assistance to those in need. The
Indian military played a crucial role in these operations.
• Infrastructure Rehabilitation: The recovery plan
included the repair and reconstruction of damaged
infrastructure, with a focus on rebuilding roads and
bridges to restore connectivity to affected areas.
• Rehabilitation and Resettlement: Rehabilitation efforts
involved providing support to affected communities, 53

including the construction of new homes and the

 Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004)

• Disaster: The Indian Ocean tsunami, triggered by a

massive undersea earthquake, struck several
countries, including India, on December 26, 2004.
Coastal regions of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and
the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were severely
affected.
• Recovery Plan:
• Immediate Response: The Indian government, along
with local authorities and international aid organizations,
launched immediate relief efforts, including search and
rescue operations, medical assistance, and provision of
food and shelter to displaced individuals.
• Rebuilding Infrastructure: The recovery plan involved
extensive efforts to rebuild damaged infrastructure, such
as homes, schools, and hospitals. This required
collaboration between government agencies, NGOs, and 54

international partners.
Differences Between Business Continuity and
Disaster Recovery

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Difference 1
• Business continuity focuses on keeping business
operational during a disaster, while disaster
recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT
infrastructure after a disaster.
• In other words, the former is concerned with
keeping the shop open even in unusual or
unfavorable circumstances, while the latter focuses
on returning it to normal as expediently as possible.

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Difference 2
• Unlike business continuity plans, disaster recovery
strategies may involve creating additional employee
safety measures, such as conducting fire drills or
purchasing emergency supplies.
• Combining the two allows a business to place equal
focus on maintaining operations and ensuring that
employees are safe.

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Difference 3
• Business continuity and disaster recovery have
different goals. Effective business continuity plans
limit operational downtime, whereas effective
disaster recovery plans limit abnormal or inefficient
system function.
• Only by combining the two plans can businesses
comprehensively prepare for disastrous events.

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Difference 4
• A business continuity strategy can ensure communication
methods such as phones and network servers continue
operating in the midst of a crisis.
• Meanwhile, a disaster recovery strategy helps to ensure an
organization’s ability to return to full functionality after a
disaster occurs.
• To put it differently, business continuity focuses on keeping
the lights on and the business open in some capacity, while
disaster recovery focuses on getting operations back to
normal.

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Difference 5
• Some businesses may incorporate disaster recovery
strategies as part of their overall business continuity
plans.
• Disaster recovery is one step in the broader process
of safeguarding a company against all
contingencies.

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How Does Disaster Recovery Work? 5 Key Features
of a Disaster Recovery Program
• Know Your Threats
• Know Your Assets
• Define Your RTO and RPO
Recovery Time Objective & Recovery point
objective
• Set Up Disaster Recovery Sites
• Test Backups and Restoration of Services

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