North Carolina, South Carolina

IT Business Continuity Planning Consulting

Planning to continue IT operations in the aftermath of a disaster is a complex task. A "disaster" can be defined as any event that significantly disrupts computer processing capabilities for a period of time, affecting the operations of the business.

Preparation for, response to, and recovery from a disaster affecting a company's IT systems requires company leaders to conduct coordinated efforts. You should consider engaging a skilled business continuity consultant to assist your internal efforts.

Conduct Risk Assessment

Periodically, you should conduct, or engage a consultant to conduct a risk assessment. This process identifies all foreseeable risks to proper operation of IT systems, focusing on likely scenarios including fire, earthquake, chemical spill, biohazard, terrorism, radiation hazards, and other potential perils. Consider less severe, but more likely risks including extended power failure, sudden hardware failure, viruses, and sabotage.

Once assessed, establish the likelihood for each risk, and use this estimate to recommend an appropriate risk mitigation strategy. Factors influencing the assessment include: geographic location, proximity to potential hazardous sites, public exposure, and reputation of the company.

Identify and Rate Critical Assets

Computer servers, firewalls, telephone switches, and various other devices are critical to the operation of the company. Depending upon the device function, the device is rated as to how critical it is to business operations.

An example rating system might be:

• Critical - must be restored immediately
• Essential - vital to restore within 1 week
• Necessary - important to restored within 4 weeks
• Desirable - prefer restoring within 8 weeks

The rating system categorizes assets such that available business continuity resources can be concentrated in the areas where they are most valuable.

Prepare Disaster Response Plan

The disaster response plan must clearly define responsibilities in time of crisis. Each person responsible for implementing the plan must understand their role, and how that role fits into the other roles defined in the plan.

Statements in the plan should include:

• Appoint a public relations spokesperson
• Refrain from releasing casualty information until families are notified
• Provide factual information as quickly as it can be verified; counter incorrect information or unfounded rumors with verified facts
• Avoid speculation on extent of losses
• Emphasize positive steps being taken

Arrange Hot Backup Site

In cases where loss of IT systems incurs near-immediate operational disruption, consider arranging for a hot backup site. This arrangement is best made prior to any disaster, when adequate time allows for thorough analysis, consideration, and selection of vendor services.

Following site selection, conduct a test to simulate activation of the hot backup site. While the potential operational disruption will likely preclude conducting a live test, many critical tasks can be reliably tested, including: data transfer, connectivity, application operation, response times, and overall time from activating the hot site until it is operational.

Document Recovery Strategy

Perhaps the most important planning you can do is to carefully map out a plan to recover from a disaster. This would include step-by-step instructions how to install, configure, and test systems in the event the original platform became unavailable.

An experienced consultant can be invaluable to your effort. Do not assume your existing hardware will always be there. Begin the process of identifying and documenting your configuration. Build and test replacement hardware, and make arrangements to have spare parts and resources ready when you need them.

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Begin your disaster recovery planning now, before it is too late. Productive Technology has experienced consulting expertise ready to assist you. Contact us now to discuss your concerns.