IT disaster recovery is the practice of anticipating, planning for, surviving, and recovering from a disaster that may affect a business. A disaster could result from events like a natural disaster, cyber-attack, or even business disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic.
A disaster recovery (DR) plan can comprise of a variety of methods. An effective DR program is crucial to an organization like Providence and has the following advantages:
- Elimination of single point of failure
- Mitigate risk, minimize downtime, remain regulatory compliant and ensure patient records are safe and protected
- Help our caregivers and regulators gain confidence, trust, and reliability
- Reduce and mitigate financial loss
The IT Disaster Recovery Program at Providence has been initiated in 2020 with the vision of developing an ecosystem to mitigate disruption of IS services and to provide minimum level of services to meet business requirements. The IT DR Framework for IS defines the policy, methodology, tools and templates, and a standardized working model. Detailed information is published on the IT DR SharePoint site and can be accessed by all caregivers.
Onboarding Tier 1 and Tier 2 applications and services to this framework commenced in June 2021, with a pilot phase (Phase 1), targeting a small subset of critical applications. Phase 1 targeted 33 (T1 and T2) applications and services, and enabled our IT DR team to pilot the framework, KB Articles, tools, and templates and create stakeholder awareness.
Phase 1 was successfully completed on December 15, 2021, and the established Disaster Recovery plans are stored in our centralized ServiceNow repository.
Armed with enriched learnings and feedback from Phase 1 implementation, we have roll-out DR Phase 2 targeting to complete DR Plans for the rest Tier 1 and Tier 2 applications and services by end of 2022.
This is an important journey in ensuring that we plan and prepare for any business disaster and build effective recovery plans. We look forward to stakeholder commitment and support across IS pillars to support this initiative.
More info
Visit the IT Disaster Recovery site.
If you have any questions about ITDR the programs, contact the team at itdr@providence.org.