Developing an incident response plan would be challenging if you started from scratch. That’s why this incident response plan template from techtarget.com is so handy.

It’s a 36-page Microsoft Word document and you can download it here.

Here’s an excerpt:

1.6 Recovery objectives

This incident management plan has been developed to meet the following objectives:

1. Provide an organized and consolidated approach to managing initial response and recovery activities following an unplanned incident or business interruption, avoiding confusion and reducing exposure to error.
2. Provide prompt and appropriate response to unplanned incidents, thereby reducing the impacts resulting from short-term business interruptions.
3. Notify appropriate management, operational staff and their families, customers, and public sector organizations of the incident.
4. Recover essential business operations in a timely manner, increasing the ability of the company to recover from a damaging loss at LOCATION.

Make sure your Incident Response Policy references a good Incident Response Plan. Use the template from techtarget.com as a good starting point.

Image source: W J (Bill) Harrison

If you’re looking for a detailed, definitive guide to hardening Windows 7, you can’t beat this security guide from Microsoft. It’s called the Threats and Countermeasures Guide: Security Settings in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and you can download it here.

It’s a massive 387 pages long and it includes specific descriptions and recommendations for every Windows 7 security setting. Here’s an example:

Accounts: Guest account status
This policy setting enables or disables the Guest account.

Possible values:

• Enabled
• Disabled
• Not Defined

Vulnerability
The default Guest account allows unauthenticated network users to log on as Guest with no password. These unauthorized users could access any resources that are accessible to the Guest account over the network. This capability means that any shared folders with permissions that allow access to the Guest account, the Guests group, or the Everyone group are accessible over the network, which could lead to the exposure or corruption of data.

Countermeasure
Disable the Accounts: Guest account status policy setting so that the built-in Guest account cannot be used.

Potential impact
All network users must be authenticated before they can access shared resources. If you disable the Guest account and the Network Access: Sharing and Security Model option is set to Guest Only, network logons fail, such as those performed by the Microsoft Network Server (SMB Service). This policy setting should have little impact on most organizations because Disabled is the default setting.

If you’re developing your own Windows 7 Hardening Guide or Windows 7 Hardening Standard, use this document as your reference and you won’t go wrong.

A very nice sample information security policy template can be found on the freedownload.is site here.

Here’s a sample of the policy template which is fifteen pages long:

II. SCOPE

A. The scope of information security includes the protection of the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.
B. The framework for managing information security in this policy applies to all ORGANIZATION XYZ entities and workers, and other Involved Persons and all Involved Systems throughout ORGANIZATION XYZ as defined below in INFORMATION SECURITY DEFINITIONS.
C. This policy and all standards apply to all protected health information and other classes of protected information in any form as defined below in INFORMATION CLASSIFICATION.

If you need help getting started with your own Information Security Policy, this sample infosec policy template is a great starting point.

Image source: CarbonNYC

You do not have to be a business master to understand that being in a scenario when you require Exchange recovery is far from a great thing. Microsoft Exchange, by its very nature, is a superb communications tool, and is actually a huge efficiency booster for companies of all sizes. Because of this, it is a extremely essential product to its end users. For this reason, when something catastrophic occurs, having the right tools is paramount. Because of its significance, there genuinely is no room for errors. This is actually a crucial understanding that any IT manager really should understand from the very beginning.

Understanding Where To Start With Tools

As part of the Microsoft Exchange platform, there are many built-in tools that can be employed when difficulty occurs. Recognizing these tools is why Exchange training has developed into such a big business within the playing field of IT. So ensuring you’re well versed with regards to exchange recovery tools is key to your administrative knowledgebase in the event you manage an exchange server.

Getting Support Might Be Necessary

Regardless of the fact that there’s a massive collection of tools on the market that may assist you to when your Exchange server fails, not all of them can be employed in all scenarios. Diagnosis is key whenever you are up against an exchange problem, and certainly correct diagnosis is the difference between good results and disappointment. Particularly crucial is the separation of problems into one of two classes: software and hardware. Part of a intelligent IT manager’s job is to realize that if it is the latter, expert assistance is not just suggested, but necessary. Making any gung-ho decisions in this case is a poor option to say the least.

Do Not Step In The Way Of A Hard Disk Failure

It is a basic fact of life that hard disk drives are not unbreakable. So when you have a failed disc drive, and it happens to contain your company’s entire Microsoft exchange database, it may seem like a really destructive situation. In a way, it really is. Although alternatively, you will find data recovery experts that handle this dilemma everyday, and getting in touch with one is certainly your best avenue when this happens.

Do You Have To Call An Exchange Server Recovery Service?

Identifying whether your Exchange database failure is just that or an actual harddrive failure is critical to how you can restore your information. Actual hard drive failures (or RAID data recovery problems, of course) will mean physical indicators, like a clicking or buzzing sound emanating from the case, will probably be fairly simple to identify. Additionally, if you can’t access the hard drive that your Exchange is on, you could also have a hardware issue. In the event you establish that you simply do have a computer hardware issue, skilled help is easily your lowest risk type of exchange recovery.

What is your plan in case of a Mac data recovery emergency? Are you ready for your Mac hard disk to crash? Basic fact is that it’s unavoidable. As mechanical devices, hard drives do fail. And when your hard drive failure is catastrophic, no data recovery software is going to retrieve your data.

When your Mac hard disk drive goes kaput (symptoms include lack of access, and a clicking or buzzing sound), you’re going to need help. Professional Mac data recovery help. Finding a quality company isn’t so straightforward, however. Use these hints to shortlist the best:

1. Important Files? – The most crucial point when looking for a Mac data recovery service is figuring out just how valuable your data is. If you just installed new programs, but have backups of critical data, professional recovery is probably unnecessary. Reinstalling your Mac OS on a new hard drive is by far your cheapest action plan, and while your data won’t be back, if your backups are all-encompassing, you won’t need to spend any cash.

2. Experience With Mac OS – So you’ve decided to call a professional. It’s vitalto realize that Windows file repair is very different to Mac data recovery. While all of hard drive recovery service shops will offer PC data recovery, a far smaller group are skilled and experienced with Mac data retrieval. Ensure your shop has the tools and expertise necessary get your data back.

3. Satisfied Customers – Most skilled Mac hard disk recovery providers will have a list of satisfied customers on hand. Some may even provide contact information for these customers, although often security issues mean they can’t just hand these details to anyone. On the other hand, best of breed Mac recovery vendors will have messages from happy customers at for reference… Just ask for one.

4. Telephone Talk – Beware always of services that urge you to ship your Mac hard drive before they’ve asked any questions. Data recovery sales people can be very aggressive, and look to take advantage of people having a data emergency. A good engineer should be able to partially solve your issue while on the phone. Hold them to this.

5. Quote First, Then Ship – It’s generally an industry standard to get a data recovery quote before service is provided. If you’re speaking to someone that won’t quote or even guarantee a price on your hard drive recovery, time to call someone else. Smaller shops will often charge more than you might have imagined, particularly if you don’t have a guaranteed price. Get them to put pen to paper on a price, and then consider sending your disk drive. You’ll be thankful you did.

Fact is, no one wants to be in a scenario where they need Mac hard drive recovery services. But if it happens, be sure to stay smart and calm.

Your Computer’s Not Acknowledging Your Hard Drive – Now What?

If you’ve received a message on your laptop or computer monitor saying “hard drive not recognized“, you will need assistance. This is normally not something you can correct alone unless you happen to be a data recovery professional. You won’t wish to take the chance of sacrificing all your data files by fooling with a hard disk when you do not have that expertise. Unfortunately, your data might have been lost should you get one of such harddrive error messages.

What One Can Attempt To Do

When the hard drive not recognized message appears on your monitor, know that you just might require expert help. But you will find a number of straightforward things it is possible to check first by yourself.

To begin with, investigate all your connections and Universal serial bus plug-ins to ascertain if there’s any form of connectivity problem there, especially whenever you are working with an external hard drive. Should you do have an external hard drive that is giving you a fix hard drive error message, try connecting the drive to a different laptop or computer and find out if it operates there. Some experts suggest trying to reinstate your data by placing the drive inside your fridge freezer and after that rapidly moving the data onto yet another drive, but good luck with this, due to the fact it rarely works.

Are There Any Other Symptoms?

Precisely what else is occurring besides you receiving this specific message? Is the hard drive making any clicking or spinning sounds? In this case, get in contact with a recovery service that can recover your missing data as this is really a manifestation of a failed hard drive! That hard drive has decided to cease functioning and you now can only hope to get back your stored data.

Have you just recently reformatted or tried to format your hard disk drive? You might have performed it wrongly or a specific thing may possibly have gone terribly wrong. Again, you’ll want a professional to correct the dilemma and restore your data.

There’s a chance a virus or spyware has corrupted your laptop or computer and this is actually providing you with the hard drive not recognized error. Or often uninstalling or even installing specific software may corrupt your hard drive.

What You Genuinely Require To Do

You need to retrieve your data when your laptop or computer lets you know of the “hard drive not recognized” message, so get in contact with a professional hard drive data recovery service and get back that which is most important: your data.

Have a RAID server difficulty and need to recover that RAID system as quickly as possible? When seeking RAID data recovery, the choices are very simple. You can choose to go the smart, correct way, and you can choose the hassle and high cost of moving in the wrong direction. The correct way seems like it would be the easy, clear choice, as it slashes general downtime and cuts costs. Still, many people choose the wrong way when they need to recover RAID systems, and it costs not only money, but critical files. This article should help you decide.

How Critical Is Your Lost Data?

When looking to recover RAID arrays in the instance where more than a single drive has failed, the key to how to handle it is in the data itself. Are you using a RAID 0 array because it helps your system perform better when you’re playing Call Of Duty? Better to consider simply rebuilding the RAID array from scratch. RAID repair rarely comes cheap, as it is such a specialized job that many hard drive recovery shops actually do not provide it. So if your machine doesn’t really have anything absolutely key to your life, it may be best to just bite the bullet, purchase some new hard drives and start again.

The other example scenario is that the failed RAID you’re working with is running an Oracle database used by your company’s sales people thousands of times per day. Or running a CRM system that is crucial when communicating with your customers. Situations like these are hand built for professional RAID recovery shops because you simply cannot afford a “we’ll see what happens” solution. If your company’s very business operations are slowed dramatically because of a failed system, do not bother attempting to recover the server yourself. It is time to call in a professional.

Quick Turnaround Wins The Day

Each minute may seem like hours when a mission critical RAID server has gone kaput. And in fact, when you multiply the number of stationary workers by those minutes, it may actually be hours. It’s never that hard to find a data recovery shop on the web, of course, but if your recovery is ultra-important, consider web searches for “immediate RAID data recovery” or “overnight RAID recovery”. The industry does have a common term for express-type services, which is often known as “expedited”. However, a tiny percentage of companies actually offer emergency repair services that can have your fixed server back in your hands within a single day or less. While the cost of these “ultra-expedited” services are higher than standard, it may be worth it if your system is killing productivity for the organization as a whole.

A List Of Do Not’s For RAID Recovery

There are specific things IT administrators will try before contacting a repair shop which may help not only the repair, but may actually fix the issue. Here are just a few of them:

Randomizing RAID Drive Order – If you have a double hard drive drive loss in your array, or even a single one, ensure you keep the array as is. Moving drives around the enclosure can actually enable your controller to destroy data permanently. Keep things as they were, and all will be good.

Do a Connections-Check – Although it is the most obvious, and easy technique out there, many people do not bother to check for hardware connection strength to make sure everything is correctly placed. Although it doesn’t happen very often, paying to ship out a mission critical server only to discover a cable was improperly connected is the most embarrassing thing to happen to a tech. Don’t make that mistake!

CHKDSK, The Enemy Within – Yes, Windows has a simple disk checker called CHKDSK that is there to help you find errors. Problem here is that CHKDSK was NOT created for RAID servers or multiple hard drive setups. Save yourself some hassle and permanent overwrites by avoiding it altogether!

No matter your server issue, professional hardware requires professional help when hard drives fail. Remember this the next time you attempt to recover RAID arrays.

The modern day computer is a fantastic piece of equipment, probably one of best tools ever created. Our reliance upon these machines is frightening at times, especially when you think about all of the data stored on them. As consumers, and business owners we keep everything on our computers: our company’s financial records, pictures of our kids, home videos, our personal financial information….the list goes on and on.

One thing many people don’t consider until it’s too late is, “what will I do if my computer ever crashes?” “Am I prepared?”. The fact is, computers fail, more importantly, hard drives fail. There is no question about this, it’s just one of those certain things in life, kind of like death and taxes. There is no way to avert it.

PC and laptop hard disk recovery is a booming profession right now. This is both good and bad for those in need of hard drive data recovery services. The good thing is with the increased competition you are no longer having to pay $5,000 to get a single hard drive recovered. The bad thing is, data recovery is a specialty that not everyone is qualified to perform.

It’s not uncommon these days to have your local computer tech attempt data recovery. While there are some powerful software solutions available, this does not help when your hard drive has suffered a mechanical failure. Specific repairs need to be made, and it can be said with 99.9% certainty, that your local computer tech or IT support does not have the equipment, skills, or knowledge necessary to complete a recovery like this. More often than not, their attempts will only render the data totally unrecoverable.

This is not meant to offend anyone in the computer repair and IT field, it’s just the facts. A good analogy would be like going to the doctor; if you need a flu shot, you go to your general practitioner; if you need quadruple bypass, you go to a heart specialist. They are both doctors, but with totally different specialties. It’s the same thing in the computer industry.

You also have to make sure that the company you are using is a real business. We have many resellers out there, and they do great work taking in drives for us, and forwarding the work to our labs here in Texas. Sometimes it’s a good idea to check out a company before sending your drive to them. Many companies are just looking to make a quick buck off of evaluation fees, or attempt fees and really have little or no experience in recovering data.

So if your computer has crashed, and you need the data recovered, make sure you deal with a company that specializes in computer data recovery. When you get your data back, you’ll be glad you did.

RAID servers use affordable hard drive technologies to supply speed and backup properties, but are not entirely secure. Despite the fact that most businesses don’t have a plan in place for RAID recovery, it really is vital, because by their quite nature, hard drives will inevitably fail. Expert assist is always accessible, but not always required when recovering data from these servers, and knowing when it really is required is hugely important to the bottom line.

Single Hard Drive Failure Notice: Your 1 Chance

The bonus of any RAID array setup is that a single hard drive can catastrophically fail, without having catastrophic outcomes. Performance is lost, yes, but the array keeps humming.

Want to save yourself a lot of trouble when a single hard drive in your array fails? Work to replace that drive quickly. The faster you act, the far more likely you will have an incident totally free RAID repair, and save yourself funds, time and hassle.

Single Drive RAID Rebuilds

The beauty of the internet is that there is certainly constantly a wide array of details on even the most obscure topics – such as RAID data recovery. Smart administrators know their way around such resources as Linux.org and Source Forge, but one of the very best locations for single drive RAID recovery suggestions are those of the manufacturers themselves!

Are you running a Dell Poweredge RAID server? Consider checking Dell’s forums. Have an Adaptec RAID controller card? Check Adaptec. Many forums are critical for self-directed RAID data recovery mainly due to the fact others have likely skilled comparable RAID failures before you, and you’ll be able to learn from their experience typically just by reading their posts. Familiarizing yourself with manufacturer forums now is a great proactive step for any administrator.

The Double Drive Loss

Since RAID server drives are normally setup all at once, losing far more than 1 drive consecutively can take place. When this does take place, most IT administrators turn to the internet for assist, searching for some kind of RAID data recovery tool that can save them time and get their RAID server back to optimum condition.

Every person wishes they were an expert, but when it comes to RAID recovery and repair, optimism just isn’t an excellent quality. Let’s face it: drives have been burned out here. Fixing them yourself implies you either have engineering expertise within the field of data storage, or are basically becoming self destructive. Two drive failures can kill, so make certain you do not attempt to create any rash moves.

Consulting a RAID data recovery specialist is usually the most effective notion in instances of double hard disk drive failure. The fact is, most providers will provide you a totally free consultation, along with a complete quote Just before they receive your broken RAID array. You’ll be thankful you left your mission-critical information in the hands of a professional, along with the time and money you’ll save is going to be worth their weight in gold.

The need for server recovery software and services, from RAID to Oracle to Exchange, has grown markedly in the past five years, owing mainly to the lower costs of server hardware. In the early part of the century, for example, small to mid-sized organizations tended to purchase and use less high end applications, but as overall server costs began to lessen markedly, the demand for these mission critical programs increased. Now, it’s common to see companies with less than 10 staff members operating a new Microsoft Exchange server, saving their customer data on a RAID server or handling their CRM on a NAS. Use of these products can, however, prove to be a double-edged sword.

The dynamics of a small organization differ hugely when compared with a large organization. Quite naturally, the accountability levels are far higher, and decisions can be confirmed faster, without a meetingdiscussion that has to involve several levels of management. Basically, a “do it yourself” culture often permeates the small organization. With high end mission-critical software, however, this DIY-ethic can actually be hurtful. When server recovery is required due to a crashed hard disk drive, the implications are massive, and it certainly is the least likely possible time to “go guerrilla” and attempt an amateur recovery. Yet, high trust in administrators can create this scenario, which can seriously worsen the situation.

Server Recovery Planning And Your Organization

Does your organization have a server recovery action plan? If it’s like most, it does not. The truth is, most people just don’t expect relatively “safe” server setups like RAID 5 and above to catastrophically fail. This, of course, is why having a plan is so necessary. When the unlikely does occur, panic can follow. Consider these tips when developing your server data recovery action plan:

List Important Resources Now – While it may sound rather obvious, gathering key IT and intellectual resources in preparation for a server failure is something most organizations have not done. All it takes, really, is a small word document listing all key support forums, product update alerts and a hard drive recovery shop that can be relied on when your organization is in a jam. Attempting to gather these details under stress is never good thing, as panic can set in. Of course, panic is the mother of permanent data loss.

Have An Expert At The Ready – When something bad happens to a server, the first instinct is to try to recover hard drives and data without the assistance of a professional. After all, IT administrators typically have a huge base of knowledge to use, and egos may play a role here. This is the typical scenario, but also the worst. Employing an expert that deals with scenarios like database corruption and server hard drive crashes on a daily basis is impossible for most organizations, but having a database of critical expert phone numbers is not. Making use of an expert in times of real emergency is the best idea, as when hard drives and databases fail, taking action yourself commonly makes things worse, and not better.

Have A Backup – Yes, it sounds like common sense. But what many organizations do not preparefor is a complete server hard drive failure. So, for example, a downed Exchange server can take down an organization for hours, even days, during an emergency. Having a daily backup plan and an extra server (a lower end PC, perhaps, with a single drive, but the ability to “instantly connect”) when times are tough means that all server crashes become seamless – thereby greatly lessening the “emergency priority” of the problem. This way, the organization “doesn’t know” that a critical issue has occurred, and it’s business as usual while the systems are restored.

In essence, managing through a data or server emergency is all about planning and preparation. It is the important difference between a well executed server recovery, and an all out panic.