Once this plan has been developed, it should be subjected to rigorous testing. The testing process itself must be planned properly, and should be carried out in a suitable environment to reproduce authentic conditions in so far as this is feasible.

The plan must be tested by those who would undertake those activities if the situation being tested occurred in reality. The test procedures should be fully documented and the results recorded. This is important to ensure that objective feedback is obtained for fine tuning the Plan.

Equally, it is important to audit both the plan itself, and the contingency and back up arrangements supporting it. No short cut could be made here at all.

SUPPORTING TOOLS & PRODUCTS FOR CHECKING & TESTING

The Disaster Recovery Toolkit is a collection of contingency review and audit items and documents. It consists of: a contingency audit questionnaire; a checklist, framework and action list for contingency planning; an audit questionnaire for your the plan; a dependency analysis document (questions and guidence); a business impact analysis questionnaire.

The toolkit is basically designed to help you perform a full audit and check of your contingency situation and practises. Again, for us, its simplicty is a major plus.