Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity,
and Organizational Policies
Chapter 19
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Objectives
• Describe the various ways backups are
conducted and stored.
• Explain different strategies for alternative site
processing.
• Describe the various components of a business
continuity plan.
• Explain how policies and procedures play a daily
role in addressing the security needs of an
organization.
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
2.5 Compare and contrast aspects of
business continuity
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© 2012
Business impact analysis
Removing single points of failure
Business continuity planning and testing
Continuity of operations
Disaster recovery
IT contingency planning
Succession planning
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
2.7 Execute disaster recovery plans and
procedures
• Backup / backout contingency plans or policies
• Backups, execution and frequency
• Redundancy and fault tolerance
• Hardware
• RAID
• Clustering
• Load balancing
• Servers
• High availability
• Cold site, hot site, warm site
• Mean time to restore, mean time between failures, recovery
time objectives and recovery point objectives
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Disaster Recovery
• Organizations face a variety of disaster
scenarios.
• Disasters can be caused by nature or manmade
events.
• Disaster recovery plans consider all types of
organizational disruption.
• Different disruptions will require different
recovery strategies.
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP) / Process
• DRPs intended to minimize disaster impact.
– Defines the data, resources, and necessary
steps to restore critical organizational
processes.
• Planning process, initial phase:
– Consider needed resources to perform the company’s
mission.
– Identify critical functions.
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Disaster Recovery Plans / Process
(continued)
• Initial phase yields the business impact
assessment (BIA).
• Continued planning includes:
– Outline of processes and procedures to restore an
organizations critical operations
– Prioritized according to criticality for restoral
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
• Focuses on continued operation of a business in
extenuating circumstances.
• Stronger emphasis placed on critical systems.
• Will describe the functions that are most critical, based
on a previously conducted BIA.
• Will describe the order in which functions should be
returned to operation.
• Describes what is needed for the business to continue
to operate.
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Backups
• Critical part of BCP and BRP
• Provides valid, uncorrupted data for restoration
• Good backups include all needed files
– Applications, operations systems, and utilities
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
What Needs to Be Backed Up?
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Data
Application programs
Operating systems
Utilities for the hardware platform
Personnel, equipment, and electrical power must
also be part of the plan.
• Backup plan should back up the files that
change more often than the files that do not
chance much.
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Backup Strategy
• Backup considerations
– Size of the resulting backup
– Media used for the backup
– How long backups will be stored
• Four types of backups
– Full, differential, incremental, delta
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Backup Types
• Full backup
– All files copied onto the storage media
• Differential backup
– Files that have changed since last full backup
• Incremental backup
– Files since last full or incremental backup
• Delta backup
– Portions of files changed since last backup
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Alternative Sites
• Should be considered in BCP / DRP
• Three types of sites:
– Hot site: Fully configured environment that
can be operational immediately
– Warm site: Partially configured, lacks more
expensive computing components
– Cold site: Basic environmental controls but
few computing components
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Utilities
• Power failures may disrupt operations
– UPSs provide enough power to allow systems
to be shutdown gracefully.
– Backup generator may be necessary for
sustained power needs.
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Cloud Computing
• Allows for the contracting of functions like
e-mail and file storage to third parties
• Can be more cost effective but also comes
with inherent risks
• Oct 21, 2012 Amazon Cloud outage
• June 29, 2012 Amazon Cloud outage
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
High Availability and Fault Tolerance
• High availability is the ability to maintain
availability during disruptive events.
• Fault tolerance is the mirrored system that takes
over if a fault occurs.
• Single point of failure is the point in a critical
operation that would cause the entire operation
to fail if it failed.
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Incident Response Policies and
Procedures
• Several phases should be covered in an
incident response policy:
– Preparation
– Detection
– Containment and eradication
– Recovery
– Follow-up actions
© 2012
Principles of Computer Security:
CompTIA Security+
Security+® and Beyond, Third Edition
Chapter Summary
• Describe the various ways backups are
conducted and stored.
• Explain different strategies for alternative site
processing.
• Describe the various components of a business
continuity plan.
• Explain how policies and procedures play a daily
role in addressing the security needs of an
organization.
© 2012