I wish I could tell you that my summer was spent vacationing
in some exotic location without internet access; or I was deep in remote third
world countries performing humanitarian work for international charities; or
that I won the lottery and was out spending my new found fortunes ­ ­­- but, I
can’t.  Instead, being a consultant who
has to work when the work is available, I spent my summer busy with delivering
client projects.

For me, that is a hopeful sign.  This bares hope of a sign that the economy is
picking up and companies are now able to support projects, such as business
continuity planning, that are often deemed deferrable during down-times.  This bares hope that budgets are starting to
allow for monies to invest in consulting assistance for projects, such as
disaster recovery planning, where the in-house expertise is lacking.  And, this bares hope that companies are
starting to put more emphasis on and giving more attention to business
continuity planning and related topics.

But, the end of summer vacations, the start of school,
football season kicking off in the United States are all signs of the calendar
changing to Fall.  And, in our profession,
that means DRJ Fall World.  I am happy to
report that I am typing up this blog page from my hotel room at the San Diego
Sheraton Hotel and Resort at DRJ Fall World 2012.  It is Monday afternoon and we are off to a
tremendous start.

Yesterday, Sunday, was full of tremendous Workshop Sessions,
a welcoming reception and product demonstrations.  Today, Monday, kicked-off with 3 very
informative and entertaining General Sessions and the opening of the Exhibit
Hall full of vendors and service providers ready and willing to educate you on
their products and services designed to assist in the strengthening and
expanding of your business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management and
emergency response programs.

I have already passed out and collected numerous business
cards – the real value-gain at these conferences – and have made a number of
new acquaintances and new friends … and it IS ONLY MONDAY.

I am looking forward to the breakout sessions this afternoon
and two more action packed days of DRJ Fall World lying in front of me.  This DRJ conference marks the 47^th
Conference put on by the DRJ and they just keep getting better.  That is mostly because the attendees are
getting more experienced and are able to drive the topics discussed to deeper
and more complex levels of challenges that we face in this field.

I will post a few more blogs during my time here so that you
can learn some of the stuff that I learn. 
And, if you happen to be here – come up and say, “Hi” – it would be a
pleasure to meet you, as well.

But, now – I have those breakout sessions to get to, so, I
will see you later.

Since 2002, my S-Corporation carried “Errors and Omissions” or Professional Insurance coverage. As an independent BCP/DR consultant, are you adequately insured? In 2008, my insurance carrier expanded coverage (known as the Bell endorsement) to include insurance for several crisis and emergency conditions that might create a business loss and hence a claim. The items covered may be of interest to you. They were not available in all states.

As an independent BCP/DR consultant, do you have the following coverage?

$ 25,000 Identity Theft Expense – coverage which reimburses the expenses of any director or officer who becomes a victim of an incident of identity theft;

$ 25,000 Terrorism Travel Reimbursement – which covers any director or officer for emergency travel expenses that he or she incurs in the event of a “certified act of terrorism”;

$ 25,000 Emergency Real Estate Consulting Fee – coverage for realtor’s fee or real estate consultant’s fee necessitated by the insured’s need to relocate due to the “Unforeseeable destruction” of the insured’s principal location;

$ 25,000 Temporary Meeting Space Requirement – coverage for rental of meeting space which is necessitated by the temporary unavailability of the insured’s primary office space due to the failure of a climate control system, or leakage of a hot water heater;

$ 25,000 Workplace Violence Counseling – in the event that a violent incident occurs at any of the insured’s premises;

$ 50,000 Kidnap Expense – coverage for reasonable fees incurred as a result of the kidnapping of a Director of Officer or their spouse, “domestic partner”, parent or child;

$ 50,000 Key Individual Replacement Expenses – coverage for the Chief Executive Officer or Executive Director who suffers an “injury” which results in the loss of life. No deductible applies to this coverage;

$ 25,000 Image Restoration and Counseling – coverage for image restoration and counseling arising out of “Improper Acts.”

$ 25,000 Donation Assurance – coverage for “Failed Donation Claim(s)”

$ 25,000 Business Travel – coverage for Business Travel Accidental Death Benefit to the Named Insured if a Director of Officer suffers an “injury” while traveling on a common carrier for business;

The Crisis Management Endorsement included the following:

$ 25,000 Crisis Management – coverage for “crisis management emergency response expenses” incurred because of an “incident” giving rise to a “crisis.”

I found this additional coverage interesting. My municipalities and larger corporations require certain type of insurance coverage be carried by indendent consultants. My lawyer advised, “Don’t go to work without it.”

cPanel is a Linux control panel used by many web hosting companies because not only is it one of the most intuitive control panels available, but also it is relatively cheap to use.  cPanel allows you to control and manage every aspect of your website and is compatible with Linux applications like Fedora, Mandriva, CetOS, and Redhat Enterprise Linux.  In addition, there is a plethora of plug-ins available online for this leading control panel.

The demand for cPanel on cloud computing platforms is very high due to the high amount of stability, security options, ease of deployment, speed, and wide array of features it offers.  From adding sub-domains and email accounts to installing scripts and checking bandwidth, the control and flexibility provided by cPanel is unsurpassed.

When running a heavily trafficked site, maintaining a backup may be the last thing on your mind.  That is why a major benefit of cPanel is that it allows you to regularly store backups of data, images, emails and other content on your website.

Also, the cPanel & WHM software package is a very user-friendly control panel that gives web hosts, as well as website owners, the ability to easily manage their servers and websites.  cPanel/WHM is designed with multiple administrative levels and offers different communication channels for administrators, resellers, and end users.  These multiple administrative levels provide security, ease of use, and flexibility for everyone from server administrators to email account users.

When cPanel is combined with a cloud hosting environment like Atlantic.Net’s cloud servers, the management of individual servers is simplified, allowing web hosting resellers to focus more time on their core business and less time managing their infrastructure.  Atlantic.Net’s cPanel cloud servers allow businesses to manage their web hosting and cloud computing needs in a more effective manner, while ensuring their data is regularly backed up in case of a disaster.  

Atlantic.Net will be dedicating some resources to educate business professionals with the best practices when it comes to deploying cloud servers for a 100% up-time guarantee!

The goal of Measured programs is to develop a
resiliency program that is efficiently sized to mitigate risk while monitoring
critical data elements to manage risk as the business demands. Measured programs are developed and
maintained by utilizing three steps.  The
first step takes into account an organization’s current state of readiness and
resources available to them. The second step reviews industry best practices
and determines application to your organization.  The third approach requires the
implementation of program monitoring and dashboarding to provide data
intelligence for senior leadership to identify a change in the risk profile and
its potential impact to the organization. 
This data will drive actionable items to treat, transfer, terminate, or
tolerate the risks at hand.

According to a Wall Street Journal article (see Penn
State Warned On Accreditation at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444318104577589174048808462.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1
), “Pennsylvania State University’s accreditation is “in
jeopardy,” one of the nation’s primary accrediting groups warned the
school, in the latest fallout from the Jerry Sandusky child-sex-abuse scandal.
“

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the
WSJ reported, “said there was ‘insufficient evidence’ that Penn State was
complying with standards related to governance and integrity, as well as
meeting financial obligations. “

Should a risk management practitioner have seen this
coming? Or is the threat just another “black swan” that no one could
have anticipated?

Does the university even HAVE a risk management
program; I’m not asking about business continuity or disaster recovery, I’m
talking about comprehensive, enterprise risk management.

Sex scandals – and the Jerry Sandusky issue is very
much a “sex scandal” – are nothing new; just ask the Roman Catholic
church. Likewise, penalties in the millions of dollars are not new.

Somewhere the school’s policies and procedures had a
loophole that apparently allowed Sandusky’s alleged crimes to go unreported to
the proper authorities. Had an experienced risk manager been privy to the
school’s P&Ps, the loophole might have been discovered and eliminated. Had
it been eliminated, most of the scandal also would have been avoided.

Once the scandal broke, an experienced risk manager –
working with university legal, PR, and administration personnel, might have
been able to mitigate some of the publicity and legal attacks.

Ellen Chaffee, a senior fellow with the Association of
Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, told the WSJ that “the
chances of Penn State losing its accreditation are ‘extremely remote.'” 

For all that, the school’s reputation has been hurt,
it’s sports programs have been  severely
damaged, and its coffers raided.

For want of a nail.

“I’m a great believer that any
tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people
can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that
they’re interested in. “Bill Gates

What a profound quote from
a visionary in the technology movement, one that paved the way to the movement
of accessing data anywhere, anytime and any way.  I’m dating myself a bit when we go back to the
days of selecting a data center just because it was nearest to where we could
do hands-on support; and where we had just enough power to manage the data plus
a few years of growth.  As remote
technology and virtual server technology became prevalent, Infrastructure
required less power and space.  Data
access allowed companies to be more agile and move their thoughts on data
center selection to enable resiliency and ease recovery. While tape backup is
still in place, the reality is having a remote data center with ease of
failover to a location geographically distant  allows recoverability to be resilient , or
have the option of basing recovery on the time it needs to be recovered and the
amount of data loss the company and customers are willing to accept.

So what do I look for in a
data center?

·        
Access
Control – Physical Security; locks, rack/cabinet locks, cameras, monitoring,
etc.

·        
Power,
cooling, and fire protection

·        
Growth
enablement

·        
If
insourced Hot Points away from an alternate data center (hot points = distance)

·        
If
outsourced, a plan for an alternate failover location

·        
Ability
to staff

·        
Federal
and regulatory compliance (as noted in my previous blog located here: http://www.drj.com/user-blogs/drj-blogs/business-continuity-and-legislative-requirements.html) – this includes political
stability

·        
Requirements
based on recoverability needs through performing a business impact assessment
(as noted in my previous blog located here: http://www.drj.com/kelly-hudson/34252-what-happens-after-the-bia.html)

·        
 Financial stability: whether you co-locate or
own the datacenter, will the datacenter be able to stay in business? Is the
market stable in the data center location?

·        
Location
stability; is this an area with frequent earthquakes or flooding, and having
the data center or a team that understands this type of algorithm on the impact
of the location

·        
Cost
of service

There are numerous other
dimensions in data center selection; especially with the growth in Cloud
technology.  I have a few questions and
would love to hear from you!

·        
What
does your checklist look like for data center selection?

·        
Are
you moving to outsourcing your data center, moving to container technology
and/or reducing your cost?

·        
Do
you know what you need for your business, and your customers?

·        
Have
you taken into consideration brand image impact on the location?