Companies stay in business for one reason – They have learned to weather the storm that the world of business throws at them daily. If business were easy and without hiccups, we would all be millionaires lounging on deserted islands sipping funny sounding drinks. The reality is this ... confidentiality, integrity and availability of a company’s resources depends heavily on the organization being able to keep the business functional in all conceivable and inconceivable scenarios.
Continuity planning goes well beyond the idea of simply doing a weekly full backup and storing the tape in the IT supervisor’s filing cabinet. Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is an in depth, involved process that allows a company to prepare for the unexpected.
In a nutshell, BCP involves understanding what it is you are trying to protect (inventory), how it can be affected (disaster scenarios), how likely it is to happen (risk assessment) and how to recover from it (recovery). Events such as fires, floods, acts of terrorism, equipment failure, meteorites and striking workers are all examples of disaster scenarios that may need to be addressed in your organization.
This article will show the reader how to begin the often over looked process of having a defined continuity plan in place.
Planning for the worst!
Disruption to your business can be labelled into one of six groups:
- Equipment failures
- Human error
- Software failures
- Disasters
- Accidents
- Malicious attack
How well your company reacts to these threats will determine the effectiveness of your business to withstand the threat. The goal of BCP is twofold in that it prevents services from being disrupted in the first place and provides a mechanism to restore the company to a fully functioning state as quickly as possible. The business continuity plan is the document that is drafted that helps make this possible.
But what are the steps?
Planning a BCP is a large step. That is the main reason many smaller organizations forgo one and try the age honoured reactive mode to interruptions in continuity. To put it mildly, reactive BCP is like bringing a sword to a western shootout – not very effective. For BCP to be effective it involves a number of steps.
- Assemble a Recovery Team.
- Inventory services and equipment.
- Determine threats to business continuity.
- Develop a disaster recovery plan.
- Develop notification procedures.
- Review and modify as necessary.
