August 1, 2017 | Devon Wilson | Disaster Recovery

  Most of us enjoy birthdays and the celebrations that accompany them.  After all, birthdays acknowledge and revere our grand journey of life and the triumphs, trials and tribulations along the way. This August, Information Management Solutions (IMS) will celebrate 19 years of serving our credit union customers and jubilation is on the menu. So why […]

October 18, 2016 | Devon Wilson | Disaster Recovery

  Like so many others, I start my day with a bowl of cereal and the morning news. It seems that most of the stories focus on tragedies throughout our country and throughout the world. I always look forward to the occasional positive story. Stories where people step up and go out of their way […]

August 10, 2016 | Kelly Gardner | Disaster Recovery

  Credit unions face unique challenges with DIY disaster recovery operations, which are becoming increasingly complex due to the proliferation of numerous applications ancillary to the Core.   The growing list of ancillary and interdependent applications, disparate data stores, and third party services, are making the recovery process an increasingly daunting task. Credit union members are […]

August 10, 2015 | Jon Biviano | Disaster Recovery

  As the IT department for many small businesses over the last 25 years, I’ve had to configure and manage a variety of user and security management solutions. With Windows NT server, Microsoft introduced Active Directory. At the time, server hardware was barely better than a desktop. IT departments spent more money per system for […]

July 22, 2015 | Devon Wilson | Backup, Disaster Recovery

  With technology rapidly changing, it is difficult for credit union IT managers to keep up. The entire landscape has changed over the past 10 years with virtualization becoming so widely adopted. Additionally, with the rapid growth of data and the demand for up-time due to internet and mobile banking, backup windows are shrinking. Many […]

June 15, 2015 | Devon Wilson | Disaster Recovery

Component Seven: Test, and Test Often Once you’ve implemented your disaster recovery solution you are on the right track towards positioning your credit union for success in the event of a disaster. However, IT is not static, it is ever changing. Therefore, it is important you implement the processes to adapt as circumstances change. Whether […]

June 8, 2015 | Devon Wilson | Disaster Recovery

Component Six: Reassess Now that we have made it this far, you now know what a successful disaster looks like. You also know specifically the components that need to be recovered to have a successful disaster. You have also established how long you are willing to be out of commission and once up, how much […]

June 1, 2015 | Devon Wilson | Disaster Recovery

Component Five: In-House vs Outsource Ok, let’s recap. You’ve defined what a successful disaster looks like, the components needed for recovery, how much time you are willing to be down and how much data you are willing to lose, and you’ve established a budget to accomplish all of the above. Now, you need to determine […]

May 26, 2015 | Devon Wilson | Disaster Recovery

Component Four: Cost Analysis You now know what our vision of a successful disaster looks like. You’ve assessed our needs and you have defined the RTO’s and RPO’s necessary to meet the overall objective. You now need to outline how much you should spend in order to achieve the desired results. Many credit unions allocate […]

May 18, 2015 | Devon Wilson | Disaster Recovery

Component Three: RTO’s and RPO’s What are RTO’s and RPO’s you ask? RTO stands for Recovery Time Objective, which defines the acceptable amount of time you are willing to be down. Since there are so many moving parts in a recovery, this is very granular. Each and every component will need to have a defined […]