2 cissp ® Official Study Guide Eighth Edition

 Logistics and Supplies 
The logistical problems surrounding a disaster recovery operation are immense. You will 
suddenly face the problem of moving large numbers of people, equipment, and supplies to 
alternate recovery sites. It’s also possible that the people will be living at those sites for an 
extended period of time and that the disaster recovery team will be responsible for provid-
ing them with food, water, shelter, and appropriate facilities. Your disaster recovery plan 
should contain provisions for this type of operation if it falls within the scope of your 
expected operational needs.
 Recovery vs. Restoration 
It is sometimes useful to separate disaster recovery tasks from disaster restoration tasks. 
This is especially true when a recovery effort is expected to take a signifi cant amount of 
time. A disaster recovery team may be assigned to implement and maintain operations at 
the recovery site, and a salvage team is assigned to restore the primary site to operational 
capacity. Make these allocations according to the needs of your organization and the types 
of disasters you face. 
Recovery
and
restoration
are separate concepts. In this context, recovery 
involves bringing business
operations and processes
back to a working 
state. Restoration involves bringing a business
facility and environment
back to a workable state.
The recovery team members have a very short time frame in which to operate. They must 
put the DRP into action and restore IT capabilities as swiftly as possible. If the recovery 
team fails to restore business processes within the MTD/RTO, then the company fails. 

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Training, Awareness, and Documentation 
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Once the original site is deemed safe for people, the salvage team members begin their 
work. Their job is to restore the company to its full original capabilities and, if necessary, 
to the original location. If the original location is no longer in existence, a new primary 
spot is selected. The salvage team must rebuild or repair the IT infrastructure. Since this 
activity is basically the same as building a new IT system, the return activity from the 
alternate/recovery site to the primary/original site is itself a risky activity. Fortunately, the 
salvage team has more time to work than the recovery team. 
The salvage team must ensure the reliability of the new IT infrastructure. This is done 
by returning the least mission-critical processes to the restored original site to stress-test the 
rebuilt network. As the restored site shows resiliency, more important processes are trans-
ferred. A serious vulnerability exists when mission-critical processes are returned to the 
original site. The act of returning to the original site could cause a disaster of its own. 
Therefore, the state of emergency cannot be declared over until full normal operations have 
returned to the restored original site. 
At the conclusion of any disaster recovery effort, the time will come to restore operations 
at the primary site and terminate any processing sites operating under the disaster recovery 
agreement. Your DRP should specify the criteria used to determine when it is appropriate 
to return to the primary site and guide the DRP recovery and salvage teams through an 
orderly transition.
Training, Awareness, and 
Documentation 
As with a business continuity plan, it is essential that you provide training to all personnel 
who will be involved in the disaster recovery effort. The level of training required will vary 
according to an individual’s role in the effort and their position within the company. When 
designing a training plan, consider including the following elements: 
■
Orientation training for all new employees 
■
Initial training for employees taking on a new disaster recovery role for the first time 
■
Detailed refresher training for disaster recovery team members 
■
Brief awareness refreshers for all other employees (can be accomplished as part of other 
meetings and through a medium like email newsletters sent to all employees)
Loose-leaf binders are an excellent way to store disaster recovery plans. 
You can distribute single-page changes to the plan without destroying a 
national forest!

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Chapter 18 
■
Disaster Recovery Planning
The disaster recovery plan should also be fully documented. Earlier in this chapter, we 
discussed several of the documentation options available to you. Be sure you implement the 
necessary documentation programs and modify the documentation as changes to the plan 
occur. Because of the rapidly changing nature of the disaster recovery and business continuity 
plans, you might consider publication on a secured portion of your organization’s intranet. 
Your DRP should be treated as an extremely sensitive document and provided to indi-
viduals on a compartmentalized, need-to-know basis only. Individuals who participate in 
the plan should understand their roles fully, but they do not need to know or have access to 
the entire plan. Of course, it is essential to ensure that key DRP team members and senior 
management have access to the entire plan and understand the high-level implementation 
details. You certainly don’t want this knowledge to rest in the mind of only one individual. 
Remember that a disaster may render your intranet unavailable. If you 
choose to distribute your disaster recovery and business continuity plans 
through an intranet, be sure you maintain an adequate number of printed 
copies of the plan at both the primary and alternate sites and maintain only 
the most current copy!
Testing and Maintenance 
Every disaster recovery plan must be tested on a periodic basis to ensure that the plan’s 
provisions are viable and that it meets an organization’s changing needs. The types of tests 
that you conduct will depend on the types of recovery facilities available to you, the culture 
of your organization, and the availability of disaster recovery team members. The fi ve main 
test types—checklist tests, structured walk-throughs, simulation tests, parallel tests, and 
full-interruption tests—are discussed in the remaining sections of this chapter.