Insiders Guide To Credit Union Managed Disaster Recovery (DRaaS)

single points of failure, Credit Union disaster recovery plan, Credit Union crisis communication, business continuity plan, business continuity softwareWe are continuing our series on the components of building your Credit Union cloud with today’s post on Credit Union managed disaster recovery (DRaaS).  In our first post on this topic, “5 Steps To Build Your Credit Union Cloud” we outlined a very deliberate and strategic path to move your Credit Union to the cloud. We explained how managed services are giving Credit Unions a new competitive advantage over those struggling to meet the increasing demands of operating complex IT infrastructures. The 5 steps were:

• Move to Managed Telecom
• Move to Managed Security (integrated locally and offsite)
• Move to Managed Disaster Recovery (DRaaS)
• Move to Hosted Servers
• Move to Service Bureau (core)

If you are a Credit Union that feels a simple hot site located at least 25 miles away from you is going to mitigate against today’s threats, this post probably isn’t for you. However, if you’re a Credit Union CIO that understands that today’s threats require a sophisticated and layered security approach read on!

Getting to DRaaS

For Credit Unions DRaaS should include all of your third party connections (think credit card, debit, ATM, Online banking, Federal Reserve, etc.). It should include having managed backups offsite of all your key IT Systems. Your core provider (Fiserv, JackHenry, OSI, Harland etc.) probably also provides Core Recovery as a Service. In addition the Credit Union should get workspace, phones, printers, pcs etc. all in the package. Hopefully you end up with little or no capital expense and a business partner that manages all of the individual solutions as one enabling easier disaster recovery testing, disaster recovery, failover and failback. Ultimately the goal should be to allow your employees to focus on the day to day business as much as possible and not all the individual parts.

The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of DRaaS involves 5 separate areas – Backup Data Center, Alternate Workspace, Business Continuity Planning (BCP), Data Vaulting and Backup Connectivity.

  1. Backup Data Center – the first thing that normally comes to mind when thinking disaster recovery is your backup data center. When gathering data to determine if DRaaS could be a solution for your Credit Union, remember to include the costs associated with:
    • Space and Power
    • Cooling
    • UPS
    • Generator
    • Fire Suppression
    • Security
  2. Alternate Worksite – After the data center is taken care of in terms of recoverability, Credit Unions need to have access to workspace to service members and/or perform critical functions. Costs you should gather before talking to a potential MSP for this area are:
    • Space (permanent/rental/etc.)
    • Cubicles & Wiring
    • Generator
    • Supplies
    • Maintenance
  3. Business Continuity Planning – Before you can determine your workspace or hotsite locations/solutions, your Credit Union must develop a business continuity plan (BCP) that consists of your Business Impact Analysis ( BIA), crisis management plan, Incident Response Plan and key data such as employee and vendor contact lists. Many solutions exist to build this plan and your Credit Union should look for the costs surrounding this area:
    • BCP Software
    • BCP Plan Development
    • BCP Plan Maintenance
    • Disaster Recovery Testing
    • Crisis Management Notification Systems (SMS/Voice/Email)
  4. Data Vaulting/Backup Strategy – Once your staff is accounting for and safe, all of your attention turns to the recovery of your systems and data. How quickly that can take place is determined by your methodology used for backups. When comparing costs from your existing method to a Credit Union managed disaster recovery provider, remember to include:
    • Data Vaulting/Backup Software(s)
    • Backup Hardware
    • Bandwidth
    • Administration/Management
    • Disaster Recovery Testing of Backups
  5. Third Party Connections – Perhaps the most costly component of creating a truly responsive disaster recovery infrastructure is the recovery costs of your third party connections. Duplication is often too expensive for most Credit Unions to consider. A Credit Union management disaster recovery services provider can provide these costs at a fraction of what it would cost your Credit Union. To gather your comparison data, remember to include:
    • Credit Card Backup Connection
    • Debit Card Backup Connection
    • SIP Backup
    • ISP Backup
    • DNS and Load Balancing
    • Online Banking Backup Connection
    • Federal Reserve Backup Connection
    • Disaster Recovery Testing

Making the move to a Credit Union managed disaster recovery services provider can be a huge cost saving for your Credit Union . But more importantly, the expertise of the MSP will strengthen your security and responsiveness strategies and allow your internal IT team to focus on more strategically aligned functions.

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