1.1 Early IT Disaster Recovery

Computing and air transport are good examples of modern technologies which had safeguards and failure controls built in at inception. Older technologies, such as railways and civil engineering, had almost no provision for safe operation until they were encouraged to improve safety by legal action and public opinion.

Consequently, the information technology industry has well-established procedures for recovery from equipment or software failures. Use is made of duplicate, or back up, equipment and data, the latter stored on tape or disk media. The I.T. recovery process is usually referred to as 'disaster recovery'.

Commerce, as one of the oldest 'industries', invented insurance as the in-built procedure for monetary compensation following the loss of essential assets. (see Section 3 Definitions: Insurance and contingency planning). Commerce still has no in-built procedures for the recovery of business operations following the loss of vital assets - buildings, computer data or key staff, (or even loss of reputation, or market share). Such concepts and procedures have had to be introduced into the established business culture by developing, implementing and maintaining business contingency plans.