February 27, 2008
More Ideas in Disaster Recovery For Law Firms
Last week I wrote a post on planning for business continuity during unexpected interruptions in operations. Ari Kaplan of Ari Kaplin Advisors wrote an article on Law.com that also addresses disaster recovery. He tells of a miserable experience trying to recover data from a cracked hard drive when his child pulled his laptop to the ground when tugging on the power cord (an experience I have narrowly escaped many times with my children).
He shares some tips he received from Jeffrey Brandt on protecting yourself from what he terms "data armageddon":
- Centralize Contacts - Keep all critical contacts on your person (ie, on a mobile device).
- Remote Data Housing - Host your data remotely. ** I personally don't think this is required so long as you have good, reliable backups that are kept offsite. However, for business continuity, having your data accessible from anywhere has its merits. **
- Duplicate Or Near Duplicate Systems - create redundancy in your servers. Replicate them so that if one goes down, another comes online.
- Secure Your Backups - keep backups offsite at a secure location. Preferably in a fire-proof vault.
- Map and identify your information - this is good advice to corporate clients as well - "in every subsequent litigation [it will have to explain] what happened and why it could not produce data for that specific date range".
- Test Regularly - this is one that will bite if not followed. Test your backups regularly to make sure your backup software is working properly.
There are several technologies that take advantage of "universal access" capabilities. For example, LexisNexis has a product called NetDocuments® that hosts and manages email and documents offsite that allows access even from a mobile device.
Kaplan has an answer to those who balk at spending such time and money to protect their data: "Although planning and preparing is not cheap, contact someone who has lived through disaster recovery and he or she will convince you that it is priceless."
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