Disaster Recovery and

Business Continuity Planning

Adequate disaster recovery and business continuity planning is now accepted as a basic requirement for every organization and business. It is widely acknowledged that a detailed disaster recovery / business continuity plan should not only exist, but should be current. It should reflect the real and on-going needs of the business activity or function of the organization.

But how do you ensure that this is the case? If you have a plan, do you know that it will all work? Do you audit it, and if so, how?

Equally fundamentally, do you know what your resource/service dependencies are and what their time criticalities are? What of your actual everyday contingency practices - do they measure up?

Business recovery, when properly documented, addresses not only the recovery of core businesses, but also realizes the importance of support functions. As such, a solid business recovery plan will include the total business. To start you on your way, here is a comprehensive subject area guide. Review the areas and topics to see if your plan is complete.

• Defining a disaster and planning for one
• The plan contents and concepts
• Summary of team plans, stages, sections and tasks
• Business Recovery Teams and functions
• Recovery Administrator
• Team Leaders and Backups
• Notification structure
• System and Application Patching and Updating Process
• Plan distribution
• Maintaining accurate business recovery plans
• Installation of the business planner
• Getting started
• Planning process and initial kick-off session
• Business Impact Analysis
• Business Recovery considerations
• Offsite storage of media and critical documents
• Communications
• Business Recovery Command Center (BRCC)
• Business Recovery Work Area
• Addressing exposures to your business