key elements to effective business recovery plan

INDUSTRY BRIEF Key Elements to an Effective Business Continuity Plan One of the biggest challenges in continuity planning is identifying and protecting Planning for business continuity is similar to buying life insurance. When looking for a Developing the Plan A key step in developing a plan is to establish the scope. This entails clarifying what is critical, essential elements. An effective plan must be departmentally broad, and consider the policy, the shopper must first decide how much insurance is needed. Only with a clear and defining requirements for covering essential elements. In doing so, there are needs of the entire enterprise. The goal is to understand what is critical, and to encompass understanding of the need can a buyer make an informed decision about the purchase. three useful metrics to keep in mind: all of the necessary parts (personnel, network, platforms, applications and data) when The same principle applies to BCP – understand the fundamental requirements before evaluating evaluating the components that support critical processes. Good business continuity potential strategies. Effective planning cannot begin without a clear understanding of the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – The amount of time it will take to go from planning (BCP) needs to take a broad view, embracing people, human behavior, customers business functions that need to be supported, and the scope of what that support will entail. the point of disaster to the point of recovery. Simply put, the RTO indicates how long the business can be down. and other factors that lie outside the data center. It is also important to secure the vision (and Many BCP solutions are available, and the costs will vary. When considering budget in the planning endorsement) of executive management. Effective planning includes a few basic steps: consider every part of the business, decide process, keep in mind that faster recovery solutions tend to be more expensive because they usually involve pre-positioned assets. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – The amount of time between a disaster and what is critical and determine how long individual departments can operate without the last full back-up. The RPO is a measure of how much data is at risk in the event some parts of their normal support systems. This prioritization is what should drive Don’t Forget Security Historically, business continuity plans have tended to focus on natural disasters: fires, of a disaster. planning decisions. For example, if a function cannot be off-line for more than two hours, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. Security breaches must also be part of the overall relocating people to a back-up data center will not be practical. What’s needed is a plan. A virus-driven system failure could spread very quickly, compromising an entire Level of Service (LOS) – This is a combination of throughput and functionality, and is in indicator of what services are secondary data center that can take on the additional load. The operational and financial world-wide enterprise. Any options proposed by a continuity plan should comply with essential. For example, a company might need the full functionality of its core cost of not having a critical function should also be considered. Without a failover call existing production security standards and policies. Even if an enterprise is running in financial systems, but not its analysis and forecasting systems. center, how much revenue would be lost if calls could not be forwarded in an disaster mode, security procedures should not be compromised. Some minor disasters emergency? How many customers would seek another supplier? could even be engineered as way to gain entry tocompany systems and access to sensitive information. By providing a general structure for its assembly, tools and templates can be helpful in developing a plan. However, key steps should continues to remain at risk. One of the most challenging tasks in BCP is to establish executive consensus about: a real disaster. An under-funded plan is a plan at risk. One option is to work BCP costs into whatever business cases are normally used to secure project funding. No project still be followed, with or without a planning tool: set the scope, define the requirements, •Which aspects of a company’s business must stay operational in an emergency should be implemented if it does not include some budget to cover continuity issues. develop the plan and test. It’s also a good idea to build the plan around a worse-case •The exact level of protection that is necessary (RTO, RPO, LOS) Trust the People In an actual disaster, people can be incredibly inventive. They are more flexible than scenerio, rather than planning for many graduated levels of disaster. If a plan can cover a “smoking hole scenario,” it should not be difficult to adapt to less severe situations. Establish a Regular Testing Program If a BCP is not tested, it may fail under the systems, especially in emergency situations. For example, in many companies, key work stress of a real disaster. The point of testing is to stress the plan, expose potential Key Success Factors While developing a Business Continuity Plan, there are four ingredients that will greatly weaknesses and uncover what’s missing. An efficient method to introduce testing is teams need little more than a laptop and an Internet connection to conduct business. These personnel could work from virtually anywhere, including: homes, alternate company influence its ultimate effectiveness: secure true executive sponsorship, establish a to look for ways it can be integrated with normal business operations. For example, regular testing program, obtain sufficient funding and trust the people. These factors servers need to be taken down for periodic maintenance. This is a perfect opportunity locations, recovery centers or temporary office space. With systems, back-up strategies must be pre-programmed, with recovery should be kept in mind throughout the planning process. to conduct fail-over testing, without adding additional down time for systems. destined to specific locations. In this situation, there are not many alternatives if recovery does not work, or if failover centers are also impacted. Secure True Executive Sponsorship Perhaps nothing is as important as engaging with upper management to clarify the big Obtain Sufficient Funding Whether counting the cost of hardware, Keeping these key factors in the foreground of the planning process will help ensure software or time, BCP is sometimes considered a good but non-essential practice. Surveys picture. Without executive guidance, planners tend to produce very expensive plans that successful business continuity plans. A properly funded, well-prioritized continuity have shown that a surprising number of companies either do not engage in formal cover every aspect of daily operations. The risk is these high-cost plans either may not plan, combined with a regular program of testing and disaster recovery drills, will help continuity planning, or believe their plans may not adequately address the problems of be fully implemented, or may be put aside for later re-consideration. The company then to safeguard an organization. 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