BUSINESS IMPACT AND RISK ANALYSIS

CREATING A DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN

The first step in a sensible business continuity process is to consider the potential impacts of each type of disaster or event. This is critical - how can you properly plan for a disaster if you have little idea of the likely impacts on your business/organization of the different scenarios?

Having determined the impacts, it is now equally important to consider the magnitude of the risks which could result in these impacts. Again, this is a critical activity - it will determine which scenarios are most likely to occur and which should attract most attention during the planning process.

A sound disaster recovery / business continuity plan is essential to protect the well being of an organization. This cannot really be over emphasized... yet many enterprises still side step the issue or hold plans which are clearly out of date or inadequate.

Part of the reason for this is the complexity of the task. This is not helped by some vendors selling planning products which are themselves extremely difficult to master.

There is now, however, a growing trend to address this head on: to use a quality disaster recovery template with forms and guide to create the plan directly. Minimum fuss, minumum complexity, maximum productivity... and a top quality plan at the end.

The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Generator is an outstanding example. It is extremely comprehensive, and comes equipped with a guidebook (MS-Word) which explains each section of the plan... and even interactively jumps to that section when required by clever use of Word Macros.

Full details of the BCP Generator can be obtained from the following site:

Business Continuity: Planning Made Easy
             The disaster recovery plan template and guide.

DISASTER RECOVERY TRAINING

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS

Appropriate knowledge and training underpins the whole of the disaster recovery management initiative. Our disaster recovery training page describes an online course which may assist.

DISASTER RECOVERY POLICIES
Policies underpin an organizations whole approach to contingency and disaster recovery. They determine the fundamental practices and culture throughout the enterprise. They are usually linked closely with security policies, both addressing the basic defence requirements to ensure the stability and continuity of the organization. It is essential therefore that they exist, are up to date and are comprehensive.

Fortunately, some excellent pre-written policy sets can now be obtained online. The following sites offer policies which embrace all aspects of information security, INCLUDING disaster recovery and business continuity:

Computer Security Policies - including online delivery
Security Policies - major portal
Network Security Policies - network focused

Service level agreements (SLAs) are fundamental to business continuity. The bottom line is that they define your minimum levels of availability from key suppliers, and often determine what actions will be taken in the event of serious disruption.

Consequently, they require full consideration and attention and must be constructed extremely carefully. Further information on service level agreements can be found on our SLA Page

ISO 27001
ISO 27001 requires appropriate business continuity management and planning.... and compliance with this internationally recognized standard is growing in importance. But how do you achieve this? How do you manage the compliance process? How do you know where you stand in relation to the demands of the standard?

CONTINGENCY AUDIT & PLAN ASSURANCE

DR SERVICES AND RESOURCES

Having created the recovery/continuity plan, it is important to ensure that it remains up to date and workable. Equally, it is essential to monitor contingency practices on the ground to ensure that they are appropriate.

The Disaster Recovery Toolkit is an audit and contingency checking product, specifically designed to assist with this. Information can be found on the following site:

Disaster Recovery Toolkit

The Disaster Recovery Toolkit is a unique tool for auditing plans and asssessing contengency arrangements

Coming soon: The Disaster Recovery Directory. This will be a comprehensive directory of service and solution providers for business continuity.... a major supplier reference source. At this time vendors are invited to complete the free entry form in advance of formal launch (see URL above).
SAMPLES & RESOURCES
We are currently expanding our library of samples and resources, as contributed by our community, and will shortly include a discrete section containing white papers. If you have an article/paper or an advert/link which you would like to appear on this site, please contact us.