Nearly half of London’s councils haven’t tested their disaster recovery (DR) plans over the past 12 months, potentially putting the availability of vital electoral register data at risk ahead of the general election on Thursday, according to Databarracks.
The disaster recovery and back-up firm sent freedom of information requests to all of London’s 32 local authorities, three of which didn’t respond and two refused to answer.
Although all respondents claimed they had a DR plan in place, 40% admitted that they hadn’t tested that plan over the past year.
Databarracks managing director, Peter Groucutt, argued that without testing, “they could be proved useless at their time of need.”
“We always recommend performing a DR test at least once a year,” he added. “At any time in the year councils are under scrutiny to keep sensitive data secure and systems running smoothly. So in the run-up to a general election, when the electoral roll is most important, it is vital to ensure your procedures are water-tight.”
It’s not just the infrequent testing of DR plans that concerned Databarracks.
Most respondents told the firm their recovery time objective (RTO) for electoral data was 24 hours, but some said it was seven days and one council claimed up to a fortnight.
Different boroughs clearly regard electoral data with varying degrees of criticality.
Some told Databarracks it was a ‘priority one’ – requiring the fastest possible recovery – while for some others there is no prioritization at all. In other councils the electoral register is not included on their continuity list or only needs to be recovered on a “best effort basis,” the vendor claimed.
Databarracks technical operations manager, Oscar Arean, told Infosecurity that in a worst-case scenario, a council system fail before the election could mean registers aren’t ready and a rerun is required in the affected constituency.
“A good DR test will test your DR process – your recovery ‘settings’ if you like,” he explained.
“Do you perform daily backups or replicate your data in real time? Will you lose a day’s worth of data, or just an hour? Either is fine; that decision has already been made. The purpose of testing is to find out if the reality meets the expectation.”
Arean added that DR testing should also test the actual recovery process, including whether supplier contact information is correct and employees know who they need to call and what they’re accountable for.
“All of this needs to be crystal clear for a DR plan to really be ready. At the end of the test, you will be able to measure how you performed against your plan,” Arean added.
“There are always lessons to learn from testing so you record any changes that need to be made and update the plan.”