Organizational Security

Jerry Grugin

Organizational security covers four main knowledge areas:  Redundancy Planning, Redundancy Components, Disaster Recovery Procedures, and Incident Response.  We will look at these topics, not necessarily in the order listed.

Alternate Disaster Recovery Sites

In case of some type of disaster, whether it be natural or man made, there needs to be a recovery site.  These recovery sites are classified according to hot sites, warm sites, and cold sites.  Business functions have to be restored if there is some large scale loss of service due to any number of activities or events.

A hot site is an entirely separate location where a business can have duplicate operations up and running within hours.  This is the most expensive approach.  This would include the network infrastructure being duplicated, telecommunications, network connectivity, systems, preconfigured software to meet all the needs of the organization, replication of data.  Sometimes, companies will have mobile hot sites located several miles away where they can relocate if necessary.  The hot site is sometimes referred to as the active backup model.  The hot site might also include office space and other components needed for business functions because the business will have to have a core group of employees at the backup site.  If every company had the choice, they would opt for the hot site option.  Not every company can afford the hot site option.  This leads into the next type of site - warm sites.

Many companies, because of costs, look for a compromise.  They choose a warm site.  The warm site will have a lot of functionality of the hot site, but there will be some level of administrative and staff installation of configuration and systems that can resume operations.  There may be the basic telecommunications, infrastructure, as well as servers there, but the company will still have to go through the process of replicating data, or bringing systems online, or doing some level of application installation.  The warm site isn't exclusively for a single company's use.  It could be for several companies.  In this way, companies can minimize costs.  They are gambling that no more than one company will need to use this shared warm site at one time.  These agreements between companies are also known as reciprocal agreements.

A cold site has almost no preconfiguration.  A cold site may simply just be a building that has electricity going to it.  It is not immediately ready to put into use.  A cold site is a place to resume activities to a limited degree, but it does not provide a built-in infrastructure to support operations.  A cold site will probably be used when a company is going to be there for an extended period of time.  Cold sites are the least expensive to put into place, but if needed, they will require the most planning and most work to resume business operations.

Redundancy Planning

Redundancy Planning includes topics such as single points of failure, RAID, Redundant Servers, U.P.S., Backup Generators, and Spare Parts.

A single point of failure can occur not just from a security standpoint, but in all of the mission critical devices and services.  It can occur in email servers, database servers, file servers, SharePoint servers, routers, switches, multi layer switches, firewalls, intrusion prevention sensors, etc, etc.  The list goes on and on.  Knowing where all the single points of failure are, and then implementing redundancy, is going to be a key part of disaster planning and recovery.  It is simply planning for redundancy.

RAID -  We want to have redundancy of data.  We do not want data to be a single point of failure.  Companies simply cannot afford to lose data.  Therefore, most companies use Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks.  All mission critical systems should be using RAID arrays for their data.  In a RAID 5 Array, we use disk striping with parity.  We want to have extra drives because of RAID 5 Array.  If one drive goes bad, we still have the data because of parity, but we want to have a spare drive in case a drive goes bad.

SPARE PARTS - Not only do we want to have redundancy of data, we also want to have redundancy of parts.  For instance, if the power goes out, we need a U.P.S. to provide temporary power until the main power source can be restored.  U.P.S. stands for uninterruptional power supply.  We also need to have spare drives and spare modular components.

BACKUP GENERATORS - If there is a need to have power restored to an entire facility, companies need backup generators.  This is a key aspect of disaster recovery and redundancy planning.  Many hot sites, warm sites, and cold sites will have backup generators stored there in times of emergency.

Types of Disruptions

There are three types of disruptions:  Non-disaster, disaster, and catastrophe.  A non disaster is where the business process in unavailable, but for a certain period of time, maybe a few minutes to a few hours.  A disaster is where a business loses operability or services for at least 24 hours or longer.  Typically, in a disaster, only a certain percentage of the facility is destroyed.  A catastrophe is a situation that destroys the entire facility.

Disaster Recovery Objectives

The objectives of disaster recovery are as follows:  Protecting data, Protecting people, resuming of business functions, minimize decision-making during disaster, and to have rehearsed plans and procedures.  These objectives are not necessarily in order.  Protecting people should be at the top of the list.

Disaster Recovery Procedures

Disaster recovery procedures include the following:  planning, exercises, backup and storage, restoration.

Incident Response

An incident is an adverse event or occurrence that has caused damage or has the potential to cause damage to a company's assets, to personnel, or to reputation.  Incident management is the exercise of developing and maintaining the ability to manage incidents within an organization so that the impacts of the incident can be contained and the company can recover within the specified time objective.  Thus, incident response is the company's capability to effectively prepare for and respond to any unanticipated events.