Blizzard 2015 business continuity tips

The blizzard of 2015 is in full swing, so you can't prepare for it now, but you can start preparing for the next one when you evaluate your company's response to the blizzard:

Blizzard 2015 business continuity tips

Healthcare Info Security put together a great article to help you do just that (including some quotes from DRI's Al Berman).

The article's tips revolve around 3 areas:

• Personnel Issues
• Reviewing Backup Processes
• Maintaining Priorities

These 3 areas will be any company's focus in a weather-related disaster. 

The steps you can take to assure you're ready to respond to a blizzard can often be applied to a tornado, hurricane, flood, etc. 

In some cases, we get a little advance warning that the weather may produce a disaster, and it's imperative the business continuity professional is prepared to take advantage of every minute of that advance warning.

Disaster recovery isn't dead: 7 things to cover in your DR plan

Business Continuity never replaced DR, it absorbed it into the BC Program. Here's a great reminder of 7 things that should be in your DR plan (from CSO):

7 critical things to cover in your disaster recovery plan

What's in an IT Disaster Recovery plan template?

SunGard Availability Services has an article that might be useful if you're working on IT DR plans:

Whats in an IT DR plan template

This is a good article and very helpful. It's also a perfect example of what a "plan template" means: it shows you the headings for the plan, the questions you need to answer, and what type of data needs to be included. It's not a file you download and fill in the blanks. 

Any guide that purports to be a quick fill-in-the-blanks template is a fraud: it's either so high level that it's worth nothing, or it's a sales pitch in disguise. SunGard Availability Services' template is exactly the kind of thing you want when you're looking for a template: some key pointers, a list of the things you must include (which is incomplete because it can't address every business in every situation), and some advice on the headings you want to use and in what order.

BC Management post on backup technologies

Check out this BC Management post on the results of their survey on backup technologies being used:

What are organizations using for backup technologies?


57% of the respondents said they were backing up to tape. Tape recovery can be time consuming and negatively impact the RTOs (Recovery Time Objectives). 

During exercises, organizations need to assure they aren't just testing a successful restore from tape, but that critical business functions are up and running in the time identified in the BIA. 

If restoring from tape could prevent your organization from meeting RTOs, it may be time for you to partner with IT leadership to show upper management why a technology upgrade is needed. IT leadership may welcome the help in articulating their business case for upgraded technology.

The CEO's knowledge of business continuity

Check out this great article from Continuity Central:

CEO? Here are three key business continuity questions you need to ask

So often, the CEO believes they have an understanding of business continuity that is greater than their true understanding. 

Business continuity professionals need to regularly communicate with the CEO to assure they understand the risk level the company was willing to take (as identified in the last Risk Analysis), what business functions were identified as critical to the survival of the company (and what business functions weren't deemed critical), and the resources required to either maintain critical functions without interruption, or recover critical functions in the in the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) as documented in the last Business Impact Analysis - including systems, data, sites, personnel, hardware including workstations

A CEO that understood these things 2 years ago when a Risk Analysis and Business Impact Analysis were completed may not recall everything, if they aren't involved in Business Continuity on a very regular basis (such as weekly, not yearly).

Can your CEO explain what is recoverable and in what time frame? Can they explain how many people would be working from home (if able) or waiting for facilities to secure a new site that can accommodate all employees and functions? 

Check out Continuity Central's article, and I'd love to know what you think.

And keep in mind that Business Continuity Awareness week is coming up in March and could be a great time to work on awareness with your CEO and upper management.

A common theme you may notice in my blogs is that I campaign hard against the idea that disaster recovery is dead (long live business resilience). Unless your RTOs for every function are zero downtime, and you have a perfect mirroring of all systems (which doesn't mean you're immune to disaster), you have work-space recovery for 100% of employees, disaster recovery is still relevant. Even if you have all of those things, you still have to deal with Crisis Communication, Emergency Response and Emergency Management, and Disaster Recovery. 

There is no getting around it. Business Continuity and Business Resilience plans enhance the Disaster Recovery plan, not replace. You can't disaster-proof your business. If you could, well, a lot of us would be out of a job!

Check out my Toolbox page for some resources you may want to incorporate for Business Continuity Awareness week.