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Do your employees have comprehensive procedures on how to recover systems at their homes and in their cars? Sometimes it is not possible to haul documentation around and keep copies in your house, car, and at work (much less keep it up to date).

Over the years, I have seen many examples of poor documentation. One major corporation I worked with (and they are still doing this as far as I know) had their support staff print out copies of their Disaster Recovery to place in their desk, home, and car. This was bad enough, but some people made changes to the documentation and never told anyone the documentation had changed. Other staff were slightly more considerate. They would make changes and tell a few co-workers that they changed the documentation. The rest of the staff was supposed to be psychic and know it somehow.

For the lucky few, they would dutifully print out copies of the new documentation and take them home. The problem they had was they didn't keep up with all of the copies and replace all of them. they would forget that they placed a copy in their spouse's car, their mother's house, or at the cabin on the lake. All of those copies never got updated. No two people ever had the same version of any of the recovery documents.

There are better methods available. Recently, I met a sales representative from Verizon wireless that was working with a county government to download updated Disaster Recovery documentation to IT staff blackberries. The method I prefer is to download all documentation to encrypted USB thumb drives. These are inexpensive and your confidential recovery procedures are protected in case the keychain they are on gets lost.