planning for business continuity answering essential questions

Point of View Q&A: Planning for Business Continuity: Answering the Essential Questions Is your company prepared for the worst? Can it keep the business going in the face of catastrophe, communications breakdown or since the potential for rapid spread coupled with a shortage of vaccines could have widespread economic impact. The World Bank compromised security? And if there’s already a business continuity plan in place, what’s the best way to make sure it covers everything estimates that a global outbreak of avian flu, for example, could result in a $2 trillion loss, or 3 percent of the world economy’s gross product. it needs to? (By comparison, the SARS outbreak led to losses of about $40 million in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the World Health Organization.) These are just some of the questions companies need to address if they want to minimize the potential impact of any disruption to their Results of a recent informal poll of IT professionals by suggest that pandemic is exactly the kind of event businesses are not prepared business. Use this quick Q&A to get an idea of why business continuity planning is critical, how to begin building a successful to deal with. business continuity plan and what your company can do today to be prepared for whatever disaster might strike tomorrow. Q: How can an organization determine its level of business continuity preparedness? Q: Why is preparing a business continuity plan important – or even necessary in the first place? A: Begin by focusing on these four main considerations: Mitigating risk, protecting mission-critical data, meeting regulatory requirements A: Simple, because disasters and other disruptive events occur – and they can directly impact every facet of the business. Facilities can and investing wisely. Each can then be broken down into specific steps for helping companies determine their degree of preparedness. suffer physical damage. Employees may not be able to come to work. Systems may go offline or fail altogether. When business can’t get •Mitigating risk: Analyze the business processes, applications and services that are most critical; assess the impact of a potential disruption; create a strategy to reduce risk done, businesses lose money – not to mention the trust of their customers and their reputation. These aren’t just theoretical propositions. In a recent survey by of CIOs and other senior IT executives at companies with more than $10 million in annual •Protecting data: Determine if sufficient security measures are in place; find out if key locations and facilities are hardened; specify redundant systems; identify backup sites; ensure revenue, 30 percent said their organizations have suffered from disaster; 9 percent of those pegged the costs of repairs and lost employee communications business at about $500,000 per day. Clearly, taking a proactive approach to business continuity planning is the best way to minimize •Meeting regulatory requirements: Make sure the organization is in compliance with current and emerging regulations; learn whether customers and business partners have mandated performance or the impact of disaster on customers, employees and stakeholders. availability service levels Q: What are some of the bigger threats to continuity, and how well prepared are today’s companies to deal with those threats? A: Unfortunately, companies face no shortage of threats to their operations. Natural events (like hurricanes and earthquakes), political •Investing wisely: Quantify the potential costs of downtime or business failure; develop a business case to optimize the investment in risk mitigation unrest, work stoppages, IT system or component failure, or even localized situations like bad weather or commuting delays can be Once these areas are addressed, organizations can go about the job of actually building the business continuity plan. disruptive. And the threat of global pandemic poses special concern, Q: Who needs to get involved in preparing and testing the plan? Is it just an executive-level exercise, or is it up to the Q: What about telecommuting? Is there something organizations should do to ensure adequate telecommutingfor employees in the event they can’t get to the workplace? IT department? A: Broadly speaking, building and testing a business continuity plan is everyone’s responsibility; the entire organization needs to be involved. A: Telecommuting is an integral part of any business continuity strategy, and there are several steps companies should take to make A business continuity plan has to have enthusiastic senior-level backing from the outset. Individual departments need to identify their business requirements and relay them to the IT team, which in turn has sure employees can work from remote locations. Planning for increased telecommuting begins with baselining current network access configurations to ensure adequate VPN access and capacity, and to make sure that conferencing, voice and video applications can to implement appropriate measures in all areas. Communication is critical throughout the process. Senior executives should be ready to be supported. Organizations also need to provide remote workers with multiple options for accessing the corporate network, such as a deliver the right messages, up and down the hierarchical structure. It’s not that everyone needs to review or edit the plan every step of primary DSL line with dial-up as backup. Make sure that connections are secure, and that authorization and authentication methods are the way, but all appropriate people need to have input – and they need to speak up if something is overlooked or omitted. working properly. See to it that the technology for working in ad hoc manner – such as collaboration and conferencing applications – has Q: How important is it to test the business continuity plan? A: The importance of testing can’t be understated; it’s the only way been implemented. Overall, think in terms of what remote workers will need to do their jobs effectively; don’t assume that just because they to uncover the flaws or gaps in a business continuity strategy. After all, change is a constant feature of today’s business environment. have laptops and broadband access they’ll be able to work as they would in the office. Employees come and go or promoted and reassigned; new IT components and systems are installed while old ones are retired; Q: What’s the real payoff of all this up-front planning? Are the costs of business continuity planning justified? regulations and policies are implemented, revised or discontinued; business processes are revamped and retooled. A business continuity A: A proactive posture to business continuity preparedness is better than a reactive posture; in fact, it’s critical. Acting proactively plan has to reflect these changes and be updated accordingly if it’s to be of any use, and testing is the best way to find out where the minimizes loss of revenue. It minimizes loss of customer confidence. It minimizes loss of market share. And it minimizes the loss of “good inadequacies might lie. Experts recommend testing the plan at least twice annually. A test does not necessarily have to be comprehensive will” surrounding your brand. The more an organization optimizes critical processes, manages risk and prepares for disruption ahead of – even table-top tests or conference-room evaluations are better than not testing the plan at all. Unfortunately, according to the time, the less likely it will suffer catastrophic impact from a disruptive event. Think about it this way, what’s the potential cost of disruption – survey, 40 percent of senior IT executives who said they have business continuity plans in place have not tested their plans in the past and is forgoing a business continuity plan worth that price? 12 months. For a more in-depth examination of the importance of business continuity planning, download ’s Business Continuity Q: What about the organization’s partners and suppliers? How do they figure into business continuity planning? Preparedness Handbook: http://www.busines.com/nx_resource.jsp?repoid=Topic&repoite m=business_continuity&rtype=Whitepaper&rvalue=bc_preparedness A: Partners, suppliers and customers definitely need to be taken into account. Make sure that their business continuity plans are _handbook&segment=ent_biz interoperable with your organization’s. Just think of the supply chain. What does it mean to your enterprise if one of the links is removed or unavailable? That’s why it’s important to determine the preparedness of those parties.
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