Doomsday planning for a small shop

Doc Searls correctly points out that the Windows monoculture of our computing systems is a weakness. I'm going to be taking his suggestion, and keeping it in play while planning IT strategy from now on.

However, for the present, I'm still going to seek low cost ways to help survive the doomsday scenario I laid out in my previous post, however. It might just be paranoia, but I like to have backup plans, just in case.

Data Lifeboats

In the past few years, the size of backups has increased at a faster pace than the tape drives. Backup to disk has become a relatively inexpensive, and fast way to do things. It occurs to me that it would be quite valuable to be able to read one of these backups while totally disconnected from the network (and any source of threat). A machine so configured could be considered to be a data lifeboat. Just as many small vessles save human lives in the event of a sinking ship, the data lifeboat would be adequate to allow a user to carry on the most essential tasks independent of all of your IT infrastructure. (Note the subtle assumption of multiple backups. If you don't have at least 2 complete backups on a shelf at any given time, you're rolling the dice.)

It should be fairly easy for even the smallest business to have at least one machine, with a complete load of the applications, and all the hardware necessary to directly read the backup drive, ready and tested, and most importantly, unplugged. We all tend to have a steady stream of older computers, and this is a perfect use for one or more of them. If the shit hits the fan, nobody is going to care much about the speed of the machine, just as long as they have something that works. This simple (simple?) measure could save a small business.

Scaling up

You might even want to consider having a set of workstations and a server, all ready to go if things get really bad. Be sure to test the heck out of it, using some spare old network hubs.

In the event of an emergency, you then pull everything infected off the network. Then disconnect from the internet and any VPN connections. Get a your backup server off the shelf, and get the restore going, meanwhile, replace all of the boxes with their older, slower, but clean and safe counterparts. By the time you've got the hardware hooked up, you should be able to let your co-workers have their systems for use. It'll be slower, but they'll definitely understand. You then can start searching for a fix, reformatting, or imagining, or whatever is required, with far less stress from your co-workers and management.

That's a cheap ($) way to deal with doomsday... ugly, but cheap.

I look forward to the discussion.

--Mike--