Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Planning

There are so many disasters and disruptions that can happen to any business, it would be foolhardy not to have a plan to deal with them. Sure, many of them may never happen to you, but some probably will - and one of them could be your downfall. We hope this week's articles will encourage you to get busy on your plan, or, if you have one, to make sure it's up to date and includes everything it needs to.

Despite the close attention paid to the details of methodologies and best practices, business continuity programs are not as successful as they should be. (Item #1)   This survey provides answers to questions we may not have thought of asking with regard to business continuity planning. (Item #2)   In a recent survey, protection of brand out-paced other top reasons for business continuity. (Item #3)  

New technologies and trends can create new challenges for IT, information security and risk management executives. (Item #4)   Disaster recovery planning is a crucial component of today's network-based organizations that determine productivity, and business continuity.
(Item #5)   Building a business continuity plan is an ongoing job, but mature technologies exist that meet the range of key requirements. (Item #6)  

As always, we look forward to hearing your comments & insights regarding business continuity. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover, email me at [email protected].

Bob Mellinger, President
Attainium Corp

1. The Top Five Ways to Fail At Business Continuity

There are many factors that can contribute to a "less-than-perfect" business continuity program - or a program that truly fails to meet management expectations. What are those fatal mistakes that should be avoided and how can an organization prevent them from occurring? This article discusses five of the most common reasons why business continuity planning initiatives fail, their consequences and what can be done to avoid them.
http://www.disaster-resource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=820:the-top-five-ways-to-fail-at-business-continuity&catid=3:planning-and-management

2. The human dimension of business continuity planning

Given most businesses rely on people to maintain their value creating processes, it makes sense that the needs of people are integral to the Business Continuity Plans of organizations. This is not a revelation for many organizations but a consistent engagement with HR professionals at a policy and practical level has been found wanting in many organizations and this round-table meeting was therefore convened to examine the issues, roles and methods to improve engagement between HR and BCM professionals.
http://www.bcifiles.com/BCIHRSurveyResults_summitmeetingpresentation.pdf

3. Business continuity and brand protection

"A strong corporate brand is vital to the operational and financial success of a business, especially in today's connected world," said William Hughes, director, Consulting Services Enterprise Resiliency practice, at SunGard Availability Services. "With news being broadcast almost instantaneously through formal and informal channels, and social media enabling people to share views in real-time, having a viable business continuity plan in place has become a strategic step in safeguarding a company's brand and reputation."
http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0901.html

4. Four critical trends in IT business continuity

Not surprisingly, organizations have made it a high priority to develop and implement reliable business continuity plans to ensure that IT services are always available to internal users and outside customers. But recent technology developments and trends, most notably server and desktop virtualization, cloud computing, the emergence of mobile devices in the workforce and social networks, are having an impact on how enterprises handle IT business continuity planning and testing.
http://www.csoonline.com/article/703171/4-critical-trends-in-it-business-continuity

5. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan Steps

The primary objective of a Disaster Recovery plan (a.k.a. Business Continuity plan) is the description of how an organization will deal with potential natural or human-induced disasters. The disaster recovery plan steps that every enterprise incorporates as part of business management includes the guidelines and procedures to be undertaken to effectively respond to and recover from disaster recovery scenarios, which adversely impacts information systems and business operations, and get back up and running as quickly as possible.
http://disasterrecovery.org/plan_steps.html

6. Three Top Tips for Successful Business Continuity Planning

Business continuity planning is a critical task for enterprises of all sizes. Statistics collected over the past 20 years consistently show an extremely high percentage of companies go out of business within one year of sustaining a multi-day outage. Business continuity planning is a complex process in today's rapidly changing IT environments, presenting formidable challenges for IT managers. In this article, we'll focus on the top three tips you need to fast track your way to a successful business continuity plan.
http://esj.com/articles/2009/06/09/business-continuity.aspx