Question

Application Security & Backup/Recovery

Looking at the Cherwell software.

3.5.1. In respect to recovery, is there is a time objective for restoring the system after a disruption?

3.5.2. Is there a service level objective when restoring the system?

3.5.3. Is there a certain amount of data (like 3 hours or days of transactions) that can be considered an acceptable (tolerable) interim loss from a disruption to the system?

Answer 1

In respect to recovery, there is a purpose of the Incident Management process which is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations, ensuring that agreed levels of service quality are maintained.

The primary goal of Problem Management is to minimize the impact of Problems on the business and prevent recurrence. When successful, downtime and disruptions are reduced. Additional benefits include:

• Increased service availability
• Improved service quality
• Decreased Problem resolution time
• Reduction of the number of Incidents
• Increased productivity
• Reduced costs
• Improved customer satisfaction

2. In the service desk owns the Incident Management process and is responsible for resolving incidents according to service level agreements with the goal of restoring services as quickly as possible and getting the customer back to work. ITIL service desk responsibilities that are associated with Incident Management include:

• Incident Management Support - Service desk managers must ensure that adequate tools, processes, and skills are maintained throughout the service desk team to ensure the timely and effective handling of incidents.
• Incident Logging and Categorization - Service desk analysts are expected to keep an accurate and up-to-date log of each incident that is reported, including the category/type of incident. Incidents need to be organized and prioritized based on the level of disruption that they cause.
• Incident Resolution - Service desk analysts typically play the role of 1st-level support within the IT organization—they're the ones that answer the phone or respond to your message when you first contact IT, and their goal is always to resolve the incident on the first call and restore service as quickly as possible
• Handling of Major Incidents - Some incidents are classified as major incidents, meaning that they cause a massive business interruption and need to be fixed immediately.
• Incident Management Reporting - If your organization has an established Problem Management process, most of the information you receive about problems will come through the service desk.

3. There is a certain amount of data that can be considered an acceptable (tolerable) interim loss from a disruption to the system and the advantage of this is the ITIL service operations processes such as Incident Management, Problem Management, and Request Fulfillment, and leverage key ITIL service transition processes including Change, Configuration, and Release and Deployment Management.