Cristie Software - Disaster Recovery for your business: November 2013

The recovery time objective (RTO) is the maximum tolerable length of time that a computer, system, network, or application can be down after a failure or disaster occurs.

Unfortunately, many companies fail to meet their Disaster Recovery RTOs because of the top three common mistakes detailed below.

1. Unrealistic Expectations;

Many backup products today follow the rule of thumb that it will take businesses 50% longer to restore their entire systems than the original backup. Many businesses have been failing to meet their RTO because of believing that the recovery time will be the same as how long it takes to back up the differences each day to tape. It may take 12 hours to back up the differences each night, however if the initial original backup of the entire database and systems took 48 hours then imagine how long it will take to restore all the databases and systems after a disaster!

Solution!

Your ‘unrealistic’ expectations are no longer improbable with Cristie Software’s TBMR solution. In fact TBMR will not only enable you to meet these commonly labelled ‘unrealistic’ RTO expectations, but they will exceed them!

This is because, unlike other backup and recovery software products, TBMR is unique in its ability to recover directly from the TSM server enabling:

A fast recovery of a system within minutes
Simultaneous recovery of machines, meaning an entire data center can be recovered in just a few hours!

2. Backing up the raw data only or even creating the wrong type of backup;
It is a common mistake for people to forget to back up the system files that allow you to access and use the data. For example, people will back up their Windows data, but forget to backup the system state information necessary to restore the entire server.

However!

You no longer have to risk forgetting to backup your key system files with Cristie Software’s TBMR solution. This is because the recovered machine is an identical copy of the original, which is not the case when software is re-installed. This gives you complete peace of mind that the entire server will be recovered. This is crucial for machines that have been fine-tuned over a long period of time, such as those used in production lines.

3. Using a tape backup medium;
If your backup medium is tape, the recovery process is drastically lengthened which causes a failure to meet your disaster recovery RTO. This is because of tape contention whereby multiple recovery tasks rely on the data set residing on the same tape causing the restores to run serially instead of in parallel which greatly increases the recovery time.

You can minimize tape contention by:

Always take in to account the recovery process when you are creating backups
Prioritizing your recovery by infrastructure dependencies and significance of the applications
Assess your backup strategy to ensure that your crucial data is not getting backed up to the same tapes

Don’t ever fail to meet your RTO again: Invest in TBMR.

Contact our sales team on: +44 1453 847000 or contact us using the links below:

By the end of reading this blog you should be able to:

Understand the HIPAA security standards
Compare the current requirements with your organisations security
Learn how Cristie Software’s Bare Machine Recovery (BMR) solutions will help you become HIPAA compliant and avoid HITECH penalties

HIPAA Regulations

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was formed in 1996 to protect the confidentiality of patients personal medical information and applies to any health care provider, health plan or clearinghouse (collectively ‘covered entities’) that electronically maintains or transmits patient health information. Following this, in 2009 the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) was formed which implemented stricter penalties for HIPAA violations and expanded the covered entities to include business associates of medical offices.

Within the HIPAA regulations, covered entities must ensure they have in place:

a Data Backup Plan – establish and implement procedures to create and maintain retrievable exact copies of electronic protected health information
a Disaster Recovery Plan – establish and implement procedures to restore any loss of data
an Emergency Mode Operation plan - establish and implement procedures to enable business continuity in relation to the processes for protection of the security of electronic protected health information while operating in emergency mode

HITECH Penalties

The enforcement rules have toughened up considerably and businesses which do not meet the requirements will face direct liability for violations. The HITECH penalties for not being HIPAA compliant include:

up to $250,000 for wilful neglect
up to $1.5 million for repeat/uncorrected violations
$50,000-$250,000 and 1-10 years in prison for criminal violations
Loss of customers and business partners who refrain from working with companies who do not sufficiently safeguard their electronic protected health information
Negative publicity and legal liabilities

If you haven’t yet planned for a worst case scenario, act now to establish the critical processes. For the seven simple steps to create a successful disaster recovery plan follow this link. The following section will help you develop a clear understanding of how Cristie Software BMR can help you achieve HIPAA compliancy.

HIPAA Compliance and Cristie Software’s BMR

Cristie Software’s BMR solutions can support businesses in meeting HIPAA requirements by:

Enabling the rapid recovery of multiple critical servers to an identical state within minutes and simultaneously, meaning a whole data centre can be recovered within a few hours after a crisis takes place. This is also ideal for helping you to achieve your recovery SLA’s.
Providing compressed backups increase the amount of free space on your storage infrastructure to aid the speed of recovery.
Encrypted backups will ensure that the electronic protected health information on your systems is highly secured and never accessible without the user’s encryption key whicheliminates the threat of unauthorized access.
The recovery simulator software add-on will carry out periodic tests of the backup and recovery process so that you can guarantee your disaster recovery and business continuity plans are error free in preparation for any crisis to occur.
The backup process and file recovery process can be completely automated, eliminating the need for manual data handling. Backups will automatically occur according to the specific schedule that the user sets in place. Backups can also be initiated by the user at any time.
Restoring files can be accomplished by simple disk selection. The data will then be downloaded to the user's computer, decrypted, and then restored to their original location, or to dissimilar hardware. A password is required to restore any files, thus, preventing unauthorized restores, as per the HIPAA Security Rule.

Cristie Software’s BMR solutions are the ideal solution for fully automated backups, optimum data security and regularly testing your BMR to give you complete peace of mind.

Get on the path toward HIPAA compliance today by contacting our sales team on: