2015 Nonprofit Technology Conference

Pretty much every nonprofit has an IT disaster recovery plan in place these days– it’s a standard auditing requirement. But often those plans are just a modified boiler plate that someone snagged off the Internet to satisfy that auditing requirement. No one has ever tested the plan or thought about whether all parts of it are practical, much less kept it up to date.

Backups are an integral part of most IT department’s disaster recovery (DR) plans, but they often fall victim tosimilar issues: they are frequently unmonitored, the backups are not tested for usability, and it’s been ages since anyone reviewed the items that are actually being backed up.

This session will do a deep dive into IT disaster recovery plans and backup strategies. We’ll review the basic terms and concepts of DR and examine the key parts to a DR plan that need to be realistic and that need regular review, testing, and updating. From the backup side of things, we’ll look at what you should be backing up and how to decide which items are mission-critical for your organization’s DR plan. We’ll look at what backup offerings are out there from low cost to high end, from in-house software and hardware to cloud-based backup solutions. We will offer DR plan and backup policy example handouts. The panel members have DR experience in organizations of various sizes.