India, April 8 -- CIOs are well versed in handling the technical aspects of a disaster recovery (DR), but meeting with stakeholders, the board, the CEO, and the public when an all too visible disaster occurs is another matter. What are the best public relations practices to follow when you have to face the people?

I've often reflected on this when I reviewed my career as a CIO. During these reflections, I found there were moments that stood out because they were great successes, and others when our execution in IT could have been better.

An example of the latter was a disaster recovery and failover at a financial institution. We had to execute the plan when our area was hit by an earthquake that knocked out all power and communications....