Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

AusCERT 2011: Plan for disaster recovery

Brisbane City Council lays out tips to help businesses through natural disasters
Brisbane City Council's John Harrison and Trent Prasser.

Brisbane City Council's John Harrison and Trent Prasser.

Recent natural disasters such as the Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi mean now is the time to look at ways of avoiding ICT and staff issues in the event of a crisis, Brisbane City Council IT experts argue.

According to the council's ICT risk, security and compliance manager, John Harrison, disaster recovery plans can be helped by having capability objectives, such as remote access for staff, well ahead of time.

“This comes into play when roads are washed away and buildings inaccessible because all of a sudden you have a whole organisation who needs to work somewhere else,” said Harrison. “That can be challenging to do that for a whole group but with smartphones using the Apple iOS and Android, staff will be at least be able to access emails and other work interfaces.”

The council's enterprise security architecture evangelist, Trent Prasser, said some controls, such as acessing the company network, would need to be relaxed if organisations were to continue operating during a disaster.

“If we’re talking about people’s work places being uninhabitable, than reduce secuirty controls and bring access control down to normal,” he said.

Prasser said the use of social media during disasters to inform staff of situations was useful. He cited the Queensland Police as a good example of an organisation that posted constant Cyclone Yasi updates to its Facebook and Twitter profiles.

“When you find yourself in a [disaster] event, that’s not the time to think about the company use of social media,” he said. “The infrastucture of Facebook and Twitter is very far away so it won’t have an impact. No one would debate that those sites are good at pushing your message out there to people.”

Prasser also suggested organisations use a public Cloud infrastructure as it can span multiple continents and offer high availabilty. “Using the Cloud is practical but you need to sort out privacy and compliance issues first so you can run functions in the Cloud. If you have those approvals in advance, you don’t need to be running around getting them in a disaster recovery situation.”

Summing up disaster management, Prasser said companies should take advantage of the current situation ,review disaster recovery plans and make improvements where necessary.

Hamish Barwick travelled to AusCERT 2011 as a guest of AusCERT

Got a security tip-off? Contact Hamish Barwick at hamish_barwick at idg.com.au

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Apple, Brisbane City Council, CERT, etwork, Facebook
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: AusCERT 2011, Brisbane City Council
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Eight things senior managers need to know about data encryption
    Securing sensitive data is a must for every organization. Today’s encryption solutions don’t slow down your users, so you’re not compromising productivity for security. Here are eight things senior managers need to know about encryption to keep their data secure.
    Learn more »
  • Control your Print Environment
    In your ongoing quest to maximize productivity and drive down costs, you might be surprised by the savings and greater competitive advantage you can achieve with a fully optimised and well-managed printing and imaging environment. In fact, studies have shown that managing your fleet holistically can save you upwards of 30% on your printing costs. And the savings increase exponentially when the scope of work includes automating your paper intensive workflows. Read more.
    Learn more »
  • Workshifting: a global market research report
    New business requirements are transforming the demands placed on IT. To operate effectively in today’s fast-paced global environment, organisations need to be able to get work done anywhere, anytime, by any type of worker to achieve the best results. This is the context for the rise of workshifting—the practice of moving work to the most optimal location, time and resources. As one of the most comprehensive reports ever conducted into the role of desktop virtualisation in enabling workplace flexibility and mobility, it reflects the growing consensus of those using technology to improve the performance of their organisation.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments