Disasters won't happen to us. Will they?

We didn't expect it, but we went through a 100% fire loss ourselves.  Business Continuity Planning (BCP), sometimes called Disaster Recovery (DR) Planning is the process which defines operating strategies, tactics, necessary infrastructure, and procedures used to ensure the timely and orderly resumption of prioritized business functions with the recommended interruption to selected business processes in the event of a disruption (or a disaster).

Mighty Oaks’ BCP services will prepare your company to be up and running after business threats such as:

• Fire, Flood, Earthquake
• Theft, Cyber Attack, Terrorism
• Utility Outage

As a typical and very practical example, fires permanently close ~44% of businesses that experience a partial fire loss.  BCP will shorten your recovery timeframes and maximize your success in dire times. Our own Business Continuity Plan was one of the many reasons that Mighty Oaks was up and running the morning after a fire that was a 100% physical loss. 

Using our own practical hands-on disaster recovery experience, we know what to do to protect your business. The people that perform Business Continuity Planning for Mighty Oaks are the same personnel that manage IT infrastructures for many business and non-profits, and handled us safely through our fire loss. They have the IT knowledge and business experience to be able to ask the right questions, and know which solutions best fit your own BCP requirements.

With smaller clients that are cost-conscious and do not need a formal BCP, we implicitly go through the stages listed below and implement solutions based upon our experience. We have many solutions provided by best-of-breed product and Canadian service partners that work out-of-the-box and address many of the basic needs for many critical business operations:

• Hosted email;
• Hosted automated backup;
• Inexpensive drives for full data archives off-site;
• Virtual server/pc implementations;
• Terminal Services / Thin Clients.

For larger clients, with more distinct accountable business groups and directives, we work through five distinct phases when performing Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning:

1. Analyze: Event impact scenarios & threats

Goal: To Brainstorm, Prioritize, & Document potential Threats and impact scenarios with requirements.  This phase will involve many client stakeholders to perform the following work:

• Define & Document Business Impact Scenarios to selected Business Operations (usually critical operations);
• For each Business Function:
  • Define the Recovery Point Objections (RPO): the acceptable latency of data that will be recovered;
  • Define the Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) : the acceptable amount of time to restore the function;
• Define & Document All Business Components Affected (Infrastructure, Data, Inventory, Equipment, Data, etc.);
• Define & Document Existing Known Workarounds, Outage Lengths, etc for all Components affected;
• Create recovery requirements for each of the defined critical functions themselves consist of both business and technical components;
• Perform a Threat analysis that could trigger the impact scenarios (fire, flood, etc.);
• Create a detailed requirements document with a comprehensive listing of critical business operations, impact scenarios, and threat analysis.

2. Design: Create solutions that meet defined requirements

Goal: Identify most cost effective disaster recovery solutions that meet two main requirements for each handled business service area.

• Minimal business service levels for operational needs;
• Timeframe in which this minimal service is needed.

This phase will detail and document BCP Solutions that include:

• Crisis management command structure;
• Location of secondary work site (as necessary) or secondary failover services and components;
• Telecommunication architecture between primary and secondary work sites;
• Data replication methodology between primary and secondary work site;
• Hardware, Application, Software, and Data requirements at the secondary work site;
• Logistical, Personnel, and Office Equipment requirements;
• Other solutions as needed.

3. Implement

Goal: Put the Plan into action. The implementation phase will:

• Execute design elements from solution design phase;
• Obtain backup services or sites;
• Ensure contracts match required solution levels;
• Procure and configure needed components;
• Work package, or project, testing takes place;
• Create a Business Continuity Plan Manual for easy-reference.

4. Testing & Organizational Acceptance

Goal: To Achieve Organizational Acceptance that the business continuity solutions satisfy the organization’s recovery requirements. Work in this phase may include:

• Crisis command team call-out testing;
• Technical swing test from primary to secondary;
• Technical swing test from secondary to primary;
• Application Testing;
• Business Process Testing;
• Update the Business Continuity Plan Manual with any corrections/edits.

Problems identified in the initial testing phase may be rolled up into the maintenance phase and retested during the next test cycle.

5. Maintenance

Goal: To ensure the BCP is accurate, workable, and tested.

The Maintenance phase of your BCP Manual include the ongoing work:

• Confirmation of information in the manual:
  • Roll-out to all staff for awareness purposes;
  • Specific training for individuals who are critical to response and recovery;
• Testing and Verification of BCP technical solutions:
  • Anti-virus, distribution, security and service paths, applications, data verification, etc.
• Testing and Verification of Documented Organizational Recovery Procedures:
  • Work processes for critical functions documented, work checklists accurate, etc.

The maintenance phase should be done every six months, in order to ensure an accurate, living Business Continuity Plan.  Ensure your longevity into the long-term with a practiced, workable, and up-to-date plan.

Next Steps

Make use of our practical hands-on and personal disaster recovery experience, and our seasoned IT personnel.  The same people that guided Mighty Oaks through our 100% fire loss in April 2008 will guide you through your disaster recovery planning and implementation process.  Use our hard-won experience to your advantage, and move the unexpected disaster into just another planned outcome.  Give us a call to discuss.  Plan your organization’s future through a disaster.