Persons new to recovery planning often find it difficult to differentiate between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. In its simplest form, Business Continuity differs from Disaster Recovery in that its focus is on people and the continuation of business processes and objectives rather than the availability of IT systems and infrastructure. Business Continuity Planning deals…
Many organisations utilise software to create, support, maintain, distribute and test their Business Continuity Plans and ensure business survival in any emergency. Regardless of size, most companies can benefit greatly from the use of Business Continuity software and many options exist for its implementation and plan maintenance strategies. Some of the direct benefits that Business…
If you didn’t add a Pandemic Plan section to your Business Continuity Plan last time around, now is a great time to get one in place, in the downtime between flu seasons. Now that the Southern Hemisphere has weathered the flu season during the Swine Flu H1N1 pandemic of 2009 it seems like the worse…
A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) allows an organisation to identify the criticality of processes, interdependencies with other business units and third party suppliers, critical system requirements (e.g. systems and applications), vital files, network drives and hardware, describe manual work arounds and prioritise business functions during a recovery situation. The BIA forms the basis for the…
Many organisations have business continuity plans designed to cater for major catastrophes but often don’t consider some of the less dramatic but more common causes of business interruption such as extended power or IT failures. Consider whether your BCP has the flexibility to respond to the wide variety of incidents that may occur.