Lab Assessment Questions

1. How do documented back-up and recovery procedures help achieve RTO? * By documenting and implementing backup and recovery procedures, the process for recovery is much more efficient, helping with the time portion of RTO. By having effective backup and recovery procedures you should have the necessary resources to restore systems from backups and a repeatable process that is known to succeed in achieving RTO. 2. True or False. To achieve an RTO of 0, you need 100% redundancy in your IT system, application, and data. * True. This is a special case of disaster recovery called business continuance. Technology that is capable of maintaining a synchronous mirror or continuous data replication stream must be utilized for all data (work product, application, server personalities, etc.).

3. Review the “Restore Horror Stories” scenario on page 371 of the text. What is most important when considering data back-up? * The goal of backing up data is to be able to restore it. 4. Review the “Restore Horror Stories” scenario on page 371 of the text. What is most important when considering data recovery? * Perform test restores. A test restore will attempt to restore data from a recent backup. If the test succeeds, the backup is good. If the test doesn’t succeed, the backup process needs to be addressed. 5. What are the risks of using your external e-mail box as a back-up and data storage solution? * It takes too much time. It can take days to upload a baseline copy of your data, and in the event of a disaster it will take days to download and restore your data. * It's just not practical * Automatic settings for online backup can skip important folders and include useless ones. It is no replacement for the human mind in making important decisions. No piece of software can possibly know what is appropriate for your specific situation without your help; it can't know which user(s) to back up, which email program you use, or where your bookkeeping files are stored. * There are good reasons to use external drives to organize your data, but many services will only back up data on your internal hard drive, ignoring any external drives. * Online backup or storage accounts can be just as easily be "hacked" into as your email accounts can be. * Online services don’t automatically encrypt your data on their storage which means that employees or law enforcement have access to you data and you may not even be notified. * Security breach of an online service can put your data at risk. * Company stability can cause any service to change their Terms of Service. * Your legal responsibilities as a business owner with your client’s personal information. * Your data can't be backed up or restored if your internet connection is down.