S 6.57 Creation of an emergency plan for the failure of the management system

Initiation responsibility: Head of IT Section, IT Security Management

Implementation responsibility: Administrators

Even management systems are liable to fail, for a variety of reasons - for example as a result of a computer crash due to a software error or hardware fault, or after a power failure or an act of sabotage. Because management systems are used above all in relatively large installations, there should be both a contingency planning concept (as described in Section 3.3) and a data backup concept (see Section 3.4) in place for these systems.

The scope of any such contingency planning concept must then also include the specification and documentation of arrangements for the failure of the management system. In particular, arrangements must be made covering rules of behaviour in the event of failure of the various management system components (manager, management server, management console).

Furthermore, it is absolutely imperative to draw up a post-incident recovery plan for the management system as a whole or its individual components. Ideally, restarting of the management system should proceed automatically. As part of the backup policy, backup copies of the management system software should be available for the eventuality of total data loss (disk crash). The storage location must be noted in the emergency procedure manual. The details required to gain access to the storage location must also be noted in the manual, for example the names and telephone numbers of the members of staff who know the necessary safe combinations or passwords (see also S 2.22 Depositing of Passwords).