Disaster Recovery

• Following is Notes from meeting 20081222

1. Business Processes Analysis

1.1 Core Processes

Need to identify Core Processes from the BusinessProcesses.

• Not according to revenue.
• Reliance is the claim made by CAcert, and the only time-critical components of reliance are CRL/OCSP.

How to do a revocation:

• online system for users
• support-generated:
  • need the support system
  • need arbitration to authorise
• need mail + maillists

SO in terms of business continuity / disaster recovery, these are CORE:

1. critical systems

2. OCSP/CRL servers

1.2 Secondary Processes

Secondary:

1. email + maillists - all redundant
2. support - receive certificate complaints, do revocations on them
3. arbitration

Discretionary -- all other processes in the list are discretionary. In context of Disaster, these are ignored, for the time being.

2. Standard Process Times

Standard Process Times (SPT) is needed as a baseline.

1. revocation
   • Support -- rebuild + startup?
     • redundant channels:
       • email support
       • website POST box
       • phone??? VoIP??? SMS???
       • IRC + chat
   • 0 time for receiving certificate complaints
   • 1 hour to pass to arbitration
2. Arbitration
   • 1 mailing list
   • 1 hour hour to designate Arbitrator
   • 24 hours to get 1st ruling on revocation
   • does arbitrator need guidelines?
     • false positives, false negatives, discretion amongst arbitrators....
3. Revocation by Support
   • 1 hour to revoke
4. Critical Systems
   • new CRL from support - 0 time
   • distribution to OCSP / CRL servers - 0 time

Then, the SPT for revocation is: 3 + 24 = 27

3. Recovery Time Objectives

Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) for core processes are how long it takes to recover the core+secondary processes needed.

1. critical systems -- rebuild and start up -- ??
   • this would have to be faster than total revocation time
   • board will have to define this time:
   • within 24 hours
2. OCSP/CRL -- rebuild and start up????
   • 0 time: must have redundancy
3. Mail+mailing lists (Arbitration)
   • 0 time - redundant -- requirement, we need redundant mail for arbitrators?

3.1 Failure Times

How long will it take then? Target is 27 hours.

• Notification of total failure (support systems) - 1 hour
• Investigation to determine total failure (sysadm team) - 1 hour
• Decision to rebuild (board 2 members) - 1 hour
• Rebuild (sysadm team, 2 people) - 24 hours

4. Maximum Acceptable Outage

Maximum Acceptable Outage (MAO) is the total time that the business decress it can be down for in this context.

1. OCSP/CRL == 0 time for existing ones
2. 2 days before new revocations issued
3. email / support / maillists == 0 time (redundant)
   • how long does it take to realise problems with mail systems?
   • throw at tech people ... we want redundant mail + 0 time

5. Recovery Point Objective

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the time back to which we recover.

1. what time before Disaster do we have data for? (Backups)?
2. revocation: 24 hours (normal incremental backups)

   • ==> revocations can be lost

   • ==> user / Arbitrator must do confirm/retry manually

   • ==> write in CPS "you must check within 24 hours to confirm/retry"

     • mail: RPO == 1 hour on mail incoming (so 1 hour SPT can be met)
3. OCSP/CRL: no issue because source files on critical systems
   • and on other OCSP servers

   • ==> requirement to load up from other OCSPs and form source.

   • RPO == 0 time
4. critical systems: RPO == 24 hours

6. Others

Service Delivery Objectives: not offered (community CA).

Best efforts standard for revocation:

• support: 1 hour ?? 24 hours???
• arbitration: 24 hours?? 7 days ??

7. Strategy and Planning:

What plans exist to put in place the systems and infrastructure required to meet the targets?

• general backups 24 hours
• mail backups 1 hour
• OCSP - 3 redundant
• channels to Arbitration - dual? we don't know
  • (e.g., support people to monitor channel and duplicate on other list)
• backup supplier of hardware???
  • -- escrow hardware for signing server
  • if the signing server is secured fully (which it must be anyway??)

• ==> redundant CA (database, online, signing, geographical)

  • mirrored drives in all machines
  • redundant comms already provided by ISP.
• Alternate processing Location, etc
  • none

Maintenance

8. Decision Contact Info

• State requirement in SM: who needs contact info for whom

• Within CAcert
  • all sysadms, all board
  • Need contact information deposited somewhere offline? e.g., somewhere where it does not effect going offline
  • Email that goes out every change.
• Sysadms must have contact info for all of Oophaga
  • (not for SM, as described in contract)

8.1 Oophaga

• need a comment in Oophaga agreement to include disaster recovery
• notification to open notifications mailing list
  • open to all members
  • public archives
• 2 messages:
  • we intend to do X on date Y
  • we're out, it's done, here's the report
• check cameras
  • are they on CAcert aisle
  • talk to BIT about new cameras

9. Threats & Disasters

As in Security Manual.

1. data breach
2. false certificate issuance

   • arbitration -> revocation

   • arbitration -> investigation, checking the logs

3. root compromise
   • revoke root with vendors (business protocol)
   • reissue root
   • revoke subroot / certs

10. Side Question

• quality of support process
• quality of arbitration processes

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• CategoryPolicy

• CategorySystems