DISASTER RECOVERY CAPSTONE PROJECT

Advisor: Jim French, Dept of Ecology

Team Members: Scott Andersen, WSDOTGary Duffield, DISDoug Selix, OFMThelma Smith, WSDOTBrian Sylvester, DOP

Capstone Assignment How can the state achieve a coordinated

approach to IT disaster recovery? How will we recover critical services and

infrastructure knowing that we share services, platforms, and customers that rely on each other for data during the recovery?

How do we expose the risks, identify the gaps and move toward meeting recovery time objectives?

How do we ensure that the capacity to recover aligns with the risk tolerance of state leadership?

5-Guiding Principles1. Establish and empower a central

authority for ‘Enterprise’ (Statewide) D/R Planning

2. Standardize and consolidate IT Infrastructure where ever possible to ease D/R Planning

3. Practice D/R Planning at the ‘Enterprise’ (not agency) level

4. Mandate D/R planning for all IT systems

5. Develop and document State guidelines on ‘risk appetite’

New Term!

Resilience and Recoverability (R/R)

LeadershipLeadership is about change!

Shared Vision: Changes on the horizon

Standardization & Consolidation System Level R/R Focus R/R Designed into All Systems Risk Tolerance and Oversight

Planning Senior Level Sponsorship

State Agencies’ Partnership

Strategic and Tactical Leadership Strategic = Resilience Tactical = Recoverability

Governor

Emergency Management Council

State Agency Liaisons

DIS, OFM, DOP, DOT, etc.

Existing Channels

Comprehensive Emergency Management

Plan - CEMP

ISB Standards

State Agencies’ Plans

Existing Plans

BudgetingExisting Catch 22

Change agency-centric approach to statewide R/R solution

Establish shared vision for funding R/R

Integrate R/R into Spending Plans Develop policy that cements R/R funding

into IT initiatives

Control Establish Ownership and Oversight

Align R/R efforts with similar or preexisiting efforts Emergency management groups Agencies’ leadership teams

Establish new teams or partnerships as needed

Establish policies for: Compliance Success Metrics Change Management

Summary LEADERSHIP!!!

Proactive = Resilience Reactive = Recovery

Close Gaps and Remove Roadblocks

Leverage Existing or Empower new Program

Standardization & Consolidation

Hardware and software consolidation and standardization is becoming the driving force behind organizations evaluating their Disaster Recovery plans.

A 2009 survey from Symantec Corporation found that 64% of organizations are creating or re-evaluating their DR plans based on a plan to consolidate and standardize their infrastructure.

Hosting Service Matrix

MaturityTarget

Transition

Target

Increase provider mgmt, reduce agency

resources

Leverage common infrastructure, consolidate hardware, reduce cost

2

Resiliency and Recoverability

Olympia ProductionData Center 1

Olympia ProductionData Center 2

Eastern WARecovery Site

Virtual Cluster 1

Servers Servers

Virtual Cluster 2

Servers Servers

Recovery Cluster 1

Servers Servers

Load Balanced

Data Replication

Server Image ReplicationVirtual Storage Virtual StorageVirtual StorageData Replication

Summary Adopt a cost effective enterprise

High Availability Architecture solution (Resilience).

Future investments in Infrastructure and Applications should include Resilience and Recoverability.

Enterprise Level R/R Focus

Planning for Resilience and Recoverability should be at the Enterprise Level.

Planning for recovery by agency, technology, or individual application is not effective for an enterprise class system.

Enterprise Level R/R Focus Enterprise Level Planning is complex, and must be done for Essential Systems.

Essential Systems support Essential Agency Functions as defined in agency COOP plans

Must consider core agency systems - run by agency or service provider

Must consider dependencies such as infrastructure and interface services

Must consider dependant trading partner systems Must consider enterprise data at recovery point Must include procedures for assuring data

integrity at recovery point 

Enterprise Level R/R Focus OFM Example - The State Payment Process

Payment Process based upon AFRS and all systems that it connects to

Historical DR Plan “DIS will recover the mainframe and all will be good”

Look at interfaces to partner agencies Look at known single points of failure

Enterprise Level R/R Focus Enterprise Class Planning requires someone to focus on getting it done for essential systems!

A single organization must facilitate Enterprise planning

Enterprise system owner and Stakeholders must fully participate in development and testing of R/R Plans

Summary Enterprise Planning is HARD!

Enterprise Class Systems are COMPLEX!

Someone Needs to GET ‘er DONE!

R/R Designed into All IT systems

Many, if not most, recent IT systems developed without Disaster Recovery – Why? Elimination viewed as a ‘Cost Reduction’

strategy. This is a ‘false economy’ – a calculated risk

Real consequences to State citizens: Missing vital systems after a disaster

Or Spend too much to ensure their availability

R/R Designed into All IT systems

Creation of WSRRO Mandate all new IT systems include R/R Review and approve

Criteria Agency impact analysis Integration impact analysis Validate appropriateness of plan

R/R Designed into All IT systems

Types of ‘valid’ plans: ‘Resilience’ ‘Warm site’ ‘Cold site’ Data protection only No recovery plan

R/R Designed into All IT systems

Resilience Recovery (Warm) Recovery (Cold) Data Protection Only

Time

Cost

Assurance

TimeCostAssurance

Summary

Mandate R/R planning for all IT systems

Scope for critical functions only

Ensure ‘Enterprise’ context

What Do We Save? If your house was on-fire, what would

you save?

We all live in the same house, we need to decide what is going to be saved! And how much!

We won’t be able to save it all.

Be careful what you choose!

Risk Tolerance & GovernanceWhat is important to the WA State Enterprise? Public Safety

(EMD/WSP/DOC/Roads/others?) Citizen Systems – Licensing, Social Systems,

others? Financial Systems - How we dispense and

receive funds. H/R Systems, Data Centers?

State Enterprise Approach!

Acceptable Risk Tolerance

How much and what loss is acceptable?

Data? E-mail? File Systems? Hardware/infrastructure Network s, communications? Applications used by Citizens? Applications used by Agencies?

What does this look like? How do we determine what and how much?

Identify and Develop a Risk Matrix!

Governance! Now we know what, How do we really know it will

work?

What are our expectations for Disaster Recovery?

How do we ensure that RECOVERY WILL work? LEADERSHIP! Identify and apply standardized comprehensive testing

(Know what and how much to test and test it the same way across the board!

Perform Resilience and Recoverability Plans Review Results and apply Process Improvement!

(Do it better next time!)

Summary Target Enterprise (State Level)

Programs/Systems NOT silo agencies Identify how much of it we really need!

RISK MATRIX!

Standardized Comprehensive Testing applied

Regularly perform Resilience and Recoverability Testing

Process Improvement

5-Principles to Implement!1. Establish and empower a central authority

for ‘Enterprise’ (Statewide) R/R Planning

2. Standardize and consolidate IT Infrastructure where ever possible to ease R/R Planning

3. Practice R/R Planning at the ‘Enterprise’ (not agency) level

4. Mandate R/R planning for all new IT systems

5. Develop and document State guidelines on ‘risk appetite’

Questions? Thank you!

Scott Andersen, WSDOTGary Duffield, DISDoug Selix, OFMThelma Smith, WSDOTBrian Sylvester, DOP