Participating as an observer in an annual DR Exercise, we learned quite a few things that are never the subject of discussions at any industry conferences. The objective of the DR exercise included restoring Tier 0 & Tier 1 applications…
Ever since IT organizations—both large and small—started injecting ‘agility’ into their already complex technology-driven environment, business risks began to rise gradually. While IT disasters were not uncommon, some were so severe that it crippled an organization’s entire workflow. Meanwhile, emerging…
Planning, Plan Development & Validation are 3 essential phases of building a BCM program. The Planning phase includes Risk Assessment, BIAs and resumption Strategies. Plan Development turns resumption Strategies into actionable Plans. Validation of Plans through Testing and Exercises builds…
Business Continuity Planning starts with setting the Program Objectives. Is the focus on recovering IT infrastructure that support the delivery of products & services? Is it about ensuring continuity of business? Or, is it responding to a natural calamity impacting…
Many organizations rely on surveys to collect everything from impacts to paperclips. Automated collection of both Impact and other Planning data without a clear means of utilizing the results (other than burying them in a Plan) are complex and flawed…
To meet today’s needs, always-on enterprises need to mitigate risks, be prepared to respond and recover quickly to meet internal, customer and regulatory objectives. Two principles are empirical: no amount of mitigation reduces potential risks to zero; and mitigation costs…
Business Continuity (BC) planners have long had disagreements with IT regarding when the IT RTO clock starts ticking and when the underlying Business Process stakeholders assume it does. In today’s technology-leveraged business world, BC planners base their Continuity plans on…
Imagine for a moment that your company building was impacted by a natural disaster; what will happen to the day-to-day operational activities? Suppose, some of the executives in your company were responsible for a scandal, how will you manage the…
News travel fast. “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” All it took was this one tweet from Justine Sacco, senior director of corporate communications at IAC to her then 170 Twitter followers. Within a…
A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) should identify the criticality of the business functions and rank them. This racking & stacking of business functions helps in prioritizing which business functions must be continued (or resumed, if interrupted) and how much resources…