Do you know what Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) is? This is one of the most misunderstood topics in business, and there’s a good chance it isn’t what you think it is.
What is BCDR?
A BCDR plan ensures that an organization can remain up and running following a disruption of business like a security breach, power outage, equipment failures, a global pandemic, etc. It is very important to have a strategy when these events occur to reduce the negative impact downtime and/or data loss can have on your organization. According to HPE,
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Creating a business continuity plan requires a thorough evaluation of the impacts disruption may have to every aspect of the business, from people to processes to supply chains. It provides a way to respond to and mitigate potential emergencies. |
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BCDR Isn’t Just an IT Problem…
The term “disaster recovery” became popularized by a set of technology products introduced to the market as “backup and disaster recovery” solutions. These technologies focused exclusively on backing up and restoring information housed in a company’s data center. This aspect of BCDR is important, but it’s just one small piece of a comprehensive BCDR strategy.
In fact, some of the most important goals of a comprehensive BCDR plan have nothing to do with the IT Department. Consider everything that would be affected if a natural disaster damaged part of one of your facilities. For instance, you might need to get a new aluminum extruder if the current one is destroyed in a tornado. More than anything, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning are part of risk management.
Fire Drill!
Some of the most important goals of a BCDR plan are personnel management and safety. Unfortunately, we often overlook these elements, or address them in piece-meal fashion instead of in a true, well-organized business continuity plan. Let’s look at an example; in the event of a fire,
- How do you account for your staff?
- Who is responsible for consolidating that information into actionable data for the fire department when they show up?
- Where will that person physically be located during the evacuation?
- Who is their backup if the primary person is unavailable?
- Who communicates what has happened to the rest of the organization?
Once you know everyone is safe, the second question most employees ask is, “What about my paycheck?” Are you ready for that one? Have you confirmed insurance coverages and limits? Does your payroll team know what to say and do? Perhaps most importantly, how do you inform employees what happens next? What if you just lost corporate email, phone systems, or call rosters?
There are so many questions to be answered, and nearly every question leads to more questions. In the smallest of small businesses, the CEO might be able to make all necessary decisions on-the-fly and they might even have a designated backup (like the CFO). However, in more complex businesses, this approach quickly falls apart. How do you handle risk management and business continuity plans? More importantly, how do you keep everyone on the same page? What if you have a distributed workforce with hundreds of employees at multiple locations on multiple shifts? This task becomes even more difficult.
Most organizations move from “the CEO and CFO have it handled” to a Word document that gets passed around to key staff. Usually this ends up on a USB drive or printed in binders…which then become outdated and are inaccessible to everyone except the key staff. This approach gets tedious to manage. IT also doesn’t help you know exactly what types of events you should be planning for in your specific geography and industry.
So, what happens when you outgrow that process too?
Vista IT Group is proud to partner with Preparis and offer their flagship business continuity planning software. Preparis is a leading software company in BCDR planning with experience in different sized environments and industries to help you understand what questions to ask and where you can find those answers. They can even help you manage your business continuity plan, including running various testing exercises (and documenting those tests). With Preparis, when the regulators come to audit, insurance companies come with questions, lawyers come with their civil suits post-incident, or the board just wants proof the company is doing the right things, you have all the information at your fingertips.
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Need help identifying exactly what combination of products and services are right for your organization? We're here to help! |
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