Welcome » IT Booklets » Business Continuity Planning » Other Policies, Standards and Processes » Data Synchronization Procedures
Data synchronization processes should include business continuity considerations due to the potential challenges that emerge when dealing with an active environment. The larger or more complex an institution is (i.e., shorter acceptable operational outage period, greater volume of data, and greater distances between primary and back-up locations), the more difficult synchronization can become. If back-up copies are produced as of the close of a business day and a disruption occurs relatively late the next business day, all the transactions that took place after the back-up copies were made would have to be recreated, perhaps manually, in order to synchronize the recovery site with the primary site. In some situations, the data latency may be seconds, minutes or even hours; therefore, reconciliation procedures should be established to ensure that post-disaster data is accurate. Additionally, testing of contingency arrangements is critical to ensure that data can be synchronized with the primary work environment within a reasonable amount of time.