FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate at the podium (ID: 42565)
National Harbor, MD, November 20, 2009 — The Honorable W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told about 2,400 people attending the National Guard’s 2009 Joint Senior Leadership Conference at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Nov. 20, 2009, that the National Guard is a force multiplier for governors responding to domestic disasters. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill) (Released)
Credit Card Processor Disaster
Talk about a serious outage. Payment gateway service provider Authorize.net was down several hours. The service is used by tens of thousands of e-commerce vendors to accept credit card and electronic checks payments on their websites. A fire in Seattle s Fisher Plaza appears to be the reason what has taken down Authorize.net. With its website down, Authorize has set up a new Twitter account to provide updates and address the many customer complaints and questions. On July 2nd at approximately 11:10 pm, an incident in a garage-level electrical room disrupted power to Fisher Plaza East and knocked out the facility’s backup generation system. The electrical room is where Fisher Plaza East receives its power from Seattle City Light. One of the services affected was Authorize.net, the largest credit card and e-check payment processor in the world, with tens of thousands of partners and processing millions of transactions on a daily basis. Authorize.net set up a Twitter account to keep its customers informed and transaction processing has been restored with a backup data center. ARB transactions will be rerun over the weekend thought there are still issues with CIM, VPOS and api.authorize.net.
American Samoa Governor and Region IX Administrator Press Conference (ID: 42521)
Pago Pago, AS, November 13, 2009 — Nancy Ward, administrator of FEMA Region IX, and Governor Togiola Tulafono during a joint news conference they conducted. Ms. Ward praised the quick work of American Samoans in cleaning up the debris after the September 29th tsunami, while Gov. Tulafono thanked FEMA for its rapid response to the disaster. Richard O Reilly/FEMA.
Tranxition LiveManage Automates Migration for Desktops in Transition: Report from The 451 Group
What is the optimal method of back up for an enterprise’s disaster recovery plan?
The Backup and Backup Retention policy is an 11 page sample policy that is a complete policy which can be implemented immediately. The document is provided in both Word 2003 and Word 2007 format and is easily modified. Solution Benefit Cost Local Backup Shorter backup times Reduced bandwidth More hardware and staff Security risks Central Backup Less hardware and staff Increased bandwidth costs Increased backup times Central Backup Shorter backup times Reduced bandwidth Less hardware and staff One-time technology investment
FEMA’s Ellizabeth Zimmerman at the podium in Utah (ID: 42569)
Salt Lake City, UT, November 20, 2009 — FEMA’s Assistant Administrator for Disaster Assistance, Elizabeth Zimmerman, makes opening remarks to representatives of recovery organizations at the Disaster Recovery Working Group in Salt Lake City. At the President’s request, the Secretaries of HUD and FEMA a co-chairing a series of five long-term recovery outreach workshops to gather new and better ways to manage long-term recovery following a disaster. Jerry DeFelice/FEMA
Project plan for developing and maintaining a Disaster Plan
There are a number of approaches that have been used by Janco s clients to create a Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Plan. One, which several have used, is to start with the Janco Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Template and implement a seven-step process (a subset of the project plan which is included in the template) using the tools included with the template. The process is as follows: Develop the contingency planning policy statement. A formal department or agency policy provides the authority and guidance necessary to develop an effective contingency plan. Conduct the business impact analysis (BIA). The BIA helps to identify and prioritize critical IT systems and components. Identify preventive controls. Measures taken to reduce the effects of system disruptions can increase system availability and reduce contingency life cycle costs. Develop recovery strategies. Thorough recovery strategies ensure that the system may be recovered quickly and effectively following a disruption. Develop an IT contingency plan. The contingency plan should contain detailed guidance and procedures for restoring a damaged system. Plan testing, training and exercises. Testing the plan identifies planning gaps, whereas training prepares recovery personnel for plan activation; both activities improve plan effectiveness and overall agency preparedness. Plan maintenance. The plan should be a living document that is updated regularly to remain current with system enhancements.
