ITM527 MOD 4 LP: Disaster Recovery and Cloud Computing

Disaster Recovery and Cloud Computing
Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
Disaster Recovery and Cloud Computing
The US Department of Defense, like any other business organization, has an enormous amount of data that are at stake to disasters such as earthquakes, floods, electrical faults and network interruption. ICT systems are vulnerable to such flaws caused by disasters. There is a growing need to protect data in important institutions such as the US Department of Defense that is the heart of the nation regarding controlling and managing security data. There are various lessons that can be used to draw the importance of migrating to the modern means of disaster recovery and business continuity. For example, the 2011 earthquake in Japan resulted in severe compromise of the traditional IT DR strategies. Network and data connectivity were disrupted by the tsunami that followed the earthquake, and business organization suffered a great loss in both properties and business data.
One of the most sought after technology for integrated and comprehensive protection of data to guarantee business continuity is cloud computing. Research indicates that cloud computing is being adopted by most organizations at a twofold rate as compared to a couple of years ago (Khoshkholghi, 2014, p. 39). Cloud computing has been linked with the ability to deliver an effective portfolio for disaster recovery and business continuity in three main spheres namely data protection, data availability and disaster recovery. The adoption of cloud computing in the US Department of Defense will add the ability to have an adaptable and efficient strategy for recovery and data backup. Cloud computing offers numerous virtualization technologies that can protect the Defense Department’s IT infrastructure through offering recovery and comprehensive backup of systems and data. The most vulnerable systems in the Department of Defense include operating system and software applications.
As argued by the Cloud Security Alliance (2011, p. 76), traditional methods of business continuity and recovery have the main limitation being the inability to cover an extensive range of applications and data within an organization. In managerial terms, it implies the balance between the cost of losing important data and the cost of venturing into modern virtualization technologies that allows recovery of data and management of IT systems by third parties. The effect of cloud computing on disaster recovery and business continuity is the simplification and virtualization of information systems related resources and structuring of effective backup strategies through public and private clouds. The impact of cloud computing on the modern solution for disaster recovery and continuity of business are not only affordable, but also manageable and cover extensive IT systems and applications (Cloud Security Alliance, 2011, p. 81). One key impact of cloud on business continuity and disaster recovery strategies is resilience and flexibility.
One of the special considerations of cloud application in the Defense Department is its speed in recovery and backup in case of an emergency. Befor...