disaster recovery

Getting additional ROI from security, business continuity, disaster recovery and compliance investments during "uneventful" operations is not unheard of, say experts. You just need to be creative. Here are some ways to make these critical investments work even harder.

When fire again threatened to char Santa Barbara, Calif., last month, the IT staff at Fielding Graduate University literally raced flames out of town with its network stashed in a cardboard box safely resting on the back seat of the getaway car. While it might sound like a dramatic rescue, it was more the result of a disaster-recovery plan, a newly virtualized network and a quick acting IT staff.

When he became CTO of petrochemical firm Champion Technologies, Roland Etcheverry walked into a disaster-recovery greenfield. There was no real disaster-recovery system in place, as fail-over technology was just starting to come into its own in 2004 and limited to "extraordinarily costly" multilocation backup systems outside his company's economic reach. When Hurricane Rita came close to the company's Houston headquarters in late 2005, all he could do was make tape backups and ship them elsewhere -- and mount the case for planning a real disaster-recovery system.

As news of the swine flu continues to dominate headlines, businesses are evaluating the potential impact on operations should the virus become a massive interruption. Control Risks, an international business risk consultancy based in Washington, DC, has issued a list of ten questions companies can use to determine just how prepared they are for a pandemic emergency