Page 12: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2021)

Training Tips for Ships

Tip #24

Disaster Recovery Plan

Hope for the Best; Plan for the Worst

Photo: © Thitichaya/AdobeStock ery few people live day-to-day expecting a disas- our critical data from loss due to disaster.

ter. However, disasters do happen and a critical Our historical learning data serves as both evidence of com- component of business continuity is ensuring that pliance and the basis on which all future training is planned.

Vwhen disaster strikes, our critical systems are re- It’s therefore critical to operations. Typically, it resides in a turned to normal operations as quickly and ef? ciently as pos- combination of our LMS and our crewing or human resource sible. Last month’s training tips for ships discussed a cata- systems. How do we protect this data from loss?

strophic ? re that occurred in France last month at one of the The ? rst goal is to reduce the likelihood of loss wherever world’s largest data centres. This ? re took millions of websites possible. Some of the highest risks are hardware failure, cy- of? ine including the Learning Management System (LMS) berattack, and human error. All enterprise-level servers should for one of the world’s largest cruise lines. LMSs are business- be con? gured with a redundant storage architecture such that critical in that they are relied upon to ensure compliance and if one or a small number of disks fail, the system continues safety. This example should immediately cause us to re? ect to operate, and no data is lost. Another critical component on our business-critical training systems, their importance to in reducing the possibility of data loss is strict data security our operations, and whether we have a comprehensive and processes. Cyber security is a growing concern because cyber reliable disaster recovery process in place for those systems. attacks which either encrypt or divulge corporate data have

Proper disaster recovery planning requires organizational become distressingly common. No organization is immune. leadership and action. There should be a disaster recovery This is a complex topic in itself but the basic practices of team that’s responsible for building and continually improv- dual-factor authentication, unique and strong passwords, and ing the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). That team should iden- system segregation are all important here. Finally, compre- tify and assess risks, determine which applications and data hensive training and data access policies are also important are critical to operations, specify processes for backup and in reducing the likelihood of data loss resulting from human recovery, and continually test and update the DRP. error.

In this article we will focus on one of the core parts of a DRP While attention to the above and other risks is critical, it for our LMS and other technical systems: how do we protect is never the case that data loss can be prevented absolutely. 12 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • May 2021

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