Disaster Management

DisastersDisastermanagement, natural or man-madeDisasterhuman, may cause great devastation to society and the environment, and most of them have long-lasting effects. To mitigate disaster effects on society and businesses, disaster managementDisastermanagement skills are needed. In information technology, disaster situations are big security problems to the Enterprise information systems that must be handled with skills just like other security problems we have discussed so far in this book. The growing business use and dependence on computing systems, the ever-increasing speed of data transmission, and the forces of globalizationGlobalization all have forced businesses into a new digitized global corner that demands high-speed data access to meet the demands of the technology savvy customers in a highly competitive global environment. In response, high-volume and high-speed databases have been set up. For a business to remain competitive and probably ahead of its competitors, all business systems must remain online and in service 24/7. No modern business can afford a disaster to happen to its online systems. Failing to achieve that level of service would mean the failure of the business. Thousands of businesses close or lose millions of dollars every year owing to the level of attention they give to their online systems and failing to protect them against disasters such as fire, power outage, theft, equipment failure, viruses, hackers, and human errors. This chapter focuses on disaster managementDisastermanagement as a major information systems’ security problem and starts a discussion of ways, tools, and best practices of dealing with disasters and mitigating their long-term effects on business information systems. This is discussed in three parts: disasterPrevention preventionDisasterprevention, response, and recovery.