Customer Reviews

A Primer for Disaster Recovery Planning in an IT Environment

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As an IT Manager for a mid-sized (140 emp) company, I found the primer to be extremely helpful as a starting point for planning. Hiatt clearly explains the nature of risk and planning. Statistics are lengthy but drive the point home. Most importantly, she reveals that DRP isn't only about IT.

If you are an IT person in charge of starting the process, this is an excellent primer that points out all the other areas you have to consider. Hiatt outlines in 100 pages all the elements of research, planning, implementation, and maintenance. She reveals who should be involved in the process and what type of people should maintain the accuracy and currency of the plan. She even gives criteria on how to choose your team. Hiatt references many times throughout the manual when/how/if to use an outside consultant and off-site storage facilities. The following 150+ pages of vendor listings, charts and appendices are extremely helpful. She doesn't just write about planning, but gives you the checklists, plans, and questionnaires to help you get started. It will be much easier for me to use some of her lists and customize for our needs instead of having to write it all from scratch. Plus, she gives a thorough objective listing of vendors which saves me from searching the Internet. As Hiatt recommends, I will continue to research but, her primer will be my main reference. I can now get started without buying expensive software.

The book has very little meat to it, although it has 200pg it ends on page 100 and gives you a bibliography. It does not go deeply into how to develop a disaster recovery plan. The second half of the book pretains to irrelevant information.

reader who want to start their DRP, and do not know where to start with, this is the book that you can kick off with your DRP meeting with this guide. A good book that you can trust and work around with your IT DR on this subject.

Case studies, project timelines, statistics, organisastion charts of a DRP, and some questionairs and forms help readers to quickly have all these information in your finger tips.

As a planner, I find it very useful too. It also act as a check lists of your current planning and be sure to cover as many area as possible. The Appendix is very useful that provide flowcharts, charts, diagrams, forms, questionair, procedures and more.

A book that should not be miss.

I found this Book very informative and appropos for our current/future IT applications. It is written in a manner which encourages future research through the inclusion of comprehensive Bibliography and Appendice's Sections. I recently received a notice from Amazon Books of the availability of Jon William Toigo's Book on Disaster Recovery Planning which at the time of Professor Hiatt's Book Publication was cited as out of print. This should prove to be of equal interest to those of us who in the present/past have been confronted with/made aware of the necessity to study in detail this subject.

As a sideline it has made me very proud to read the works of a former classmate(SHS 1965)