Business Continuity Planning

Project
“Kick-off Meeting”

September 15, 2010

Robert T. Warren, Technical Risk Services, Inc.

Paul Cleary, Horn IT Solutions, Inc.
 Objectives of Today’s
Meeting
• Discuss the importance of business
continuity planning

• Provide an overview of the business

continuity planning process

• Discuss project plan including

composition of working groups
Business Continuity Planning
Definitions:
Emergency Plan – what to do when it hits the
fan
Disaster Recovery Plan – what to do to get it
back to normal
Crisis Management Plan – what to tell people
Business Continuity Plan – what to do in the
meantime
Business Continuity Planning
 Business Continuity Planning

“A business continuity plan should be an

essential element of any business strategy…
I cannot think of any reason not to be
prepared, but 60 billion reasons why we
should.”

Perrin Beatty, President & CEO, CME

Reasons to Plan
• Protect your investment

• Protect your livelihood

• Legal obligations

• Fulfill essential services

• Stakeholder obligations

• Satisfy financial partners

• Reputation

• Meet increased demand

Business Continuity Planning
Understanding the Risks
Risks Associated with People
Risks Associated with Weather
Risks Associated with
Outside Forces
Understanding YOUR Risks

What risks are you most vulnerable

to?
Understanding YOUR Risks
Consider:

• The location of your operations.

• Nature of your business activities.
• Likelihood of an event occurring.
• Severity of the consequences.
Business Impact Analysis

Identify Business Processes:

If you lose this process…

• What is the impact to the organization?

• What is the tolerable downtime?

Identify Critical Business
Processes
Business Impact Analysis Criteria:

• Customer Service
• Legal Obligations
• Revenue
• Expenses
• Stakeholders
• Reputation
 Identify Resources Required
to Maintain Critical Processes
• Documentation
• Human resources
• Equipment
• Facilities
• Supplies
• IT and communications infrastructure
• Applications
• Transportation
 Strategies for Business
Recovery
How do we temporarily replace the
necessary resources…

• In the most efficient manner, and

• Within the tolerable recovery timeframe

Disaster Avoidance Strategies
Some examples…

• Backup and recovery strategies

• Off-site storage
• Fire suppression
• Physical security
• Network security
• Information life-cycle management – know what
information is important and where it is
• Equipment life-cycle management – service contracts,
warranties, service level agreements
• Redundancy - elimination of single points of failure
 Notification Strategies
Establish BCP Team and emergency
communications such as…
• Public broadcasters/Emergency broadcasters
• Phone trees
• Emails
• Blackberry PIN messages
• Text messages
• Web site postings
• Employee polling/roll call
• Notification Services (e.g. Message One)
 Communication and
Collaboration Strategies
• Contact lists
• Cell phones
• VoIP – voice over IP
• Telecommuting/VPN remote access
• Laptop policy – home every night
• On-line collaborative tools (e.g. Sharepoint)
• Instant Messenger
• Video conferencing
Human Capital Continuity
Strategies
• Cross training
• Mutual aid
• Contractors
• Temp agencies
• Outsourcing
• Employment policies – sick leave, on-
call
 Equipment Continuity
Strategies

• Inventory lists – know what you need

• Warranties, service guarantees, and
service level agreements
• Equipment sparing/caching
• Clustering
• Virtualization
Facility Continuity Strategies

• Temporary facilities

• Mutual aid

• Geographic diversity
Application Continuity
Strategies
• Backup and recovery
• Off-site storage
• Co-location
• Data synchronization
• Redundancy – clustering
• Virtualization
• Monitoring
• Geographic diversity
• Outsourcing
Records Continuity Strategies

• Life-cycle management
• Off-site storage
• Electronic storage
• On-line access
• Version control
 Writing the Plan

• Have a Program not a Plan

• Use a collaboration tool
• Make it accessible in times of
emergency
• Consider using BCP software
Maintaining and Testing the Plan

• Bake the maintenance of the plan

into your other business processes
• Set up a routine testing cycle
• Vary the types of testing you do –
desktop reviews to full scenario
simulations
• Use resources from outside your
organization
Next Steps: Develop Project Plan

• Select participants for each stage of the

project.

• Establish project timelines.

• Schedule the working group sessions.

Thank you!