Cyber Security Case Study 8

Business situation

Hospital had already invested in creating a partially functioning disaster recovery infrastructure, however two attempts to test DR center had failed miserably in the past, resulting into complicating the relationship between management and vendors. Valency Networks was approached for consultancy in this matter to repair or improve DR site operations.

Solution

• Valency Networks performed a detailed technical analysis of the DR site to understand why the previous attempts failed and studied network and applications thoroughly to understand the business situation from data sensitivity perspective
• Existing production infrastructure was studied as well to substantiate the cause of failure in the previous attempts
• A map diagram in terms of network and data point connectivity was created.
• Another dummy test was asked for, and performed without making any change to production and DR site. As expected, the test failed and multiple logs were captured.
• Captured logs were studied to reveal incorrect storage configurations, incorrect network design, and missing application tune-ups which were supposed to be vital for the DR test to succeed.
• A two plan was created to fix the findings. The first step was to fix problems and make DR test a success.
• The second plan was to improve DR Failover and failback performance.
• First plan was executed by calling for a downtime. Second plan was executed in the given time slot too
• . Both test results were successful and recorded. Hospital asked for design changes to accommodate their internal web server and file servers.
• DR design was updated, implemented and failover tested.
• A training session was performed for hospital's IT staff to impart them with DR knowledge and best practices.
• Appropriate and adequate documentation was created and handed over to hospital's IT staff to ensure smooth future operations

Benefits

• Hospital acquired guaranteed business continuity and data integrity for their sensitive database
• Hospital's IT management could free up manned resources looking after DR situations and use those in other productive areas.
• Assurance of data availability for critical medical equipments and for doctor's reference, was achieved.