IT Disaster Recovery Glossary

Glossary

Application Impact Assessment — AIA

An application impact assessment is a process used to evaluate the potential effects of implementing changes, updates, or new software applications on an organization’s existing systems, infrastructure, and business processes.

Backup and Recovery

Backup and recovery refers to the processes and technologies that are used to restore data, systems, and applications in the event of failure or disruption.

Business Resiliency Professionals Association — BRPA

BRPA is an independent professional organization focused on education and information exchange related to disaster recovery planning, business continuity planning, crisis management, and overall organizational resiliency, primarily serving professionals in the Chicago area.

Configuration Management Database — CMDB

A configuration management database is intended to contain all relevant information about hardware and software components and the relationships between those components used in an organization’s IT infrastructure.

Cyber Resilience

Cyber resilience refers to the ability of an organization to prepare for, respond to, and recover from cyber threats and data breaches.

Data Redundancy

Data redundancy is the practice of storing multiple copies of critical data across different locations to prevent data loss.

Disaster Recovery — DR

Disaster recovery is an organization’s method of regaining access and functionality to its IT infrastructure after a disruptive event.

Disaster Recovery International Institute — DRII

The Disaster Recovery International Institute is a non-profit that helps organizations prepare for and recover from disruptions through education, accreditation, industry certifications, and thought leadership in business continuity and related fields.

Disaster Recovery Journal — DRJ

The Disaster Recovery Journal is the industry’s largest resource for business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis communication, and risk management.

Disaster Recovery Plan — DRP

A disaster recovery plan is a document that outlines how an IT system will be recovering from an infrastructure/application service disruption.

Downtime

Downtime refers to the period during which a system, service, or business function is unavailable.

​Entity Relationship Diagram — ERD

An entity relationship diagram is a visual representation that shows how different entities (people, objects, concepts, etc.) within a system relate to each other.

Extract, Transform, Load — ETL

An ETL is a tool that is used to transform and blend data from multiple sources.

Failover

Failover refers to an automatic switch to a backup system when the primary system fails.

Information Technology Disaster Recovery — ITDR

Information technology disaster recovery is an overall process of identifying and putting in place the most cost and time efficient disaster recovery plans for a business’s IT requirements.

Information Technology Asset Management — ITAM

Information technology asset management is a set of business practices that combines financial, inventory, and contractual functions to optimize spending and to support lifecycle management and strategic decision-making within the IT environment.

Information Technology Risk Management — ITRM

Information technology risk management is defined as the policies, procedures, and technology an organization adopts in order to reduce the threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences that could arise if data is not protected.

Recovery Point Objective — RPO

A recovery point objective measures back in time to when an organization’s data was preserved in a usable format, usually to the most recent backup.

Recovery Time Objective — RTO

A recovery time objective is the duration of time and a service level within which a business process, application, and/or vendor service must be available after a disaster in order to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in continuity.

Runbook

A runbook is similar to a disaster recovery plan and might indicate strictly technical recovery script procedures.

Service-Level Agreement — SLA

A service-level agreement is a contract that defines performance expectations, including uptime and recovery times.

ServiceNow — SNOW

ServiceNow is a cloud-based software platform that helps businesses automate workflows and manage IT services.

Statement of Applicability — SOA

A statement of applicability is the main link between your information security risk assessment and treatment work.

System Impact Assessment — SIA

A system impact assessment is an evaluation of how a proposed change will affect a system.

Technology Impact Assessment — TIA

A technology impact assessment is a structured process of evaluating how the implementation of a new technology could affect an organization across various aspects, including its operations, people, processes, and overall business environment.