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Without testing of and training for business continuity plans, you may never know if they are worth the paper they're written on - or the disk space they take up. First you have to find out if they work, where the problems are, and what needs fixing. Then, you have to make sure that everyone knows what is expected of them and give them the opportunity to practice so things become familiar. This week's articles will help you with these tasks.

Business continuity training is helpful for employees to understand the responsibility they have to the recovery success. (Item #1) Training and awareness programs create value for your entire organization. (Item #2) The more you can decide for people, particularly in the first four to five hours, the more they just know what to do and the better your recovery is going to be. (Item #3)

These checklists for tests and exercises can be helpful. (Item #4) This article identifies the steps for network business continuity system testing in the lab environment, without loss of productivity. (Item #5) In the state of Texas testing is a high priority. (Item #6)

As always, we look forward to hearing about your concerns with regards to business continuity. If you have a topic you'd like to see covered, please email me at bmellinger@attainium.net

Best Regards,

Bob Mellinger
President
Attainium Corp

Quote of the Week

"People in crisis make bad decisions."
- Kelley Okolita, Hanover Insurance Group Inc. -

Articles

1. The Value of Business Continuity Training and Exercising
Companies should include employees in the planning/development process and provide Business Continuity training for all personnel. This ensures employees are not only aware of their responsibilities in the event of a disaster, but can properly execute those functions.
http://www.cxoamerica.com/currentissue/article.asp?art=26306&issue=158

2. Designing a Business Continuity Training Program to Maximize Value & Minimize Cost
This white paper shows how a properly designed training and awareness program can be developed and implemented in a cost effective and efficient manner. Without training, time and resources invested in planning are wasted.
http://www.avalution.com/pdf/Training.pdf

3. Disaster recovery plans require relentless testing, documentation, says expert
Whether you call it testing or exercising, do it a lot. Test for a loss of systems. Test for a loss of facility power. Test for an IT and a physical security breach. Test for natural disaster scenarios. Test, test, test. And keep track of who is performing and who isn't.
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid80_gci1286068,00.html

4. The design, management and evaluation of exercises and tests
The document details a four step approach to design, manage and evaluate business continuity testing and exercising activities.
http://www.continuitycentral.com/ExerciseandTestDesignMethodology.pdf

5. Network emulation for business continuity testing
When it comes to technological aspects of business continuity, IT departments are faced with the need to perform rigorous and realistic testing of business continuity procedures and capabilities for network and application systems.
http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0543.htm

6. Business Continuity Testing
Pages 39 to 46 of this business continuity guide from the Texas Dept. of Information Resources deals with testing the BC plan and may provide helpful information for your BC test. Testing and maintenance is an ongoing program of validation and updating the documentation. Tests (sometimes called exercises) expose the areas in the plan that need to be revisited.
http://www.dir.state.tx.us/IRAPC/bcpg/bcpg.pdf