Business Continuity Plan

“Disaster is an occurrence that disrupts the functioning of the organization resulting in loss of data, loss of personnel, loss of business or loss of time” (Hiatt, 2000). In this case, we are focusing mainly on natural disasters. This makes our focus shift towards the destruction of physical resources more than other types of crises. Before starting the plan, we should be able to secure the necessary support and resources from top management for the plan to be carried out, have a plan development team and have a disaster recovery coordinator (Hiatt, 2000). All companies, especially ones located within areas prone to natural disaster should allocate budget and effort towards disaster preparedness. If the company has special IT personels that are familiar with the matters, it is best. Otherwise, the plan development team should contain members that know about the business network system as well as the company’s operation. These are the necessary steps before making the actual

The plans devised by each team can be tested. It may not be possible to test all sessions at one time. Facilities can have planned drills in which they evacuate buildings. IT can test their back up servers by accessing files at random times. It’s recommended that IT does this frequently as even one lost day of data could do harm to the company. Employees should be able to go through the motions of a disaster day. Everything from calling into a line and making sure they understand instructions for new meeting locations to being able to work from a remote computer should be covered. The warehouse and create a strategy to obtain new transportation and new storage facilities should theirs be destroyed. It’s better to practice and understand the plan before any incidents occur than to try to piece it together in the middle of chaos.

Thank you for your response. Whenever a crisis hits an organization, not even the best business insurance can fully compensate for the loss. So after the horrific events of 911, human resource and risk management departments (Washington DC adjacent companies) acknowledged the need for continuity /disaster recovery plans. In many cases, insurance carriers required a written continuity /disaster recovery plan on file for continued coverage.

During a disaster or emergency, the company must maintain normal operations required to address time-sensitive, disaster-specific issues. No plan can anticipate addressing all the human, operational and regulatory issues raised during a disaster or emergency.

The business continuity & disaster recovery is written into the policy to ensure each department knows and has a plan in case of an unexpected event such as a fire, vandalism, and natural disaster that would disrupt normal business. This part of the plan also states that data administrators are the ones responsible to implement procedures for critical backup of data and how long the recovery time would be which is set by the data stewards and other stockholders.

This includes development of written plans and procedures to ensure critical operations are maintained. Preparedness includes identification of essential supplies and actions, critical positions, specific roles, responsibilities, orders of succession and delegation of specific authorities, and communication. The most important aspect of emergency planning is for the safety of the staff during an emergency. One or more secure location should be identified for staff during an emergency. Communication methods must be identified and tested between locations. Mutual aid agreements and emergency aspects of vendor contracts should also be reviewed as part of this process. It is also very important to exercise all sections of your plan (PublicRescourceOrg,

Next, you need to identify and document your company's key functions and related services. You need to understand the activities and resources required to deliver your core services. You need to decide if the function is minor, moderate, or significant. And if the need for that service will change over time. For example, payroll might not be something you consider significant during the first 24 hours after the disaster occurs, but it will be significant by the next

Every business and organization can experience a serious incident which can prevent it from continuing normal operations. This can happen any day at any time. The potential causes are many and varied: flood, explosion, computer malfunction, accident, grievous act... the list is endless.

Disasters have become an inevitable part of businesses and organizations as well. They not only have a major effect on business and organizational continuity; they also result to an overhaul in organizational operational mechanisms (Awasthy, 2009). It is for this reason that many organizations and business resort to preparing business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans that will facilitate better disaster management in future. Effective disaster recovery plans are important to every business and organization (Thejendra, 2008).

Disaster Recovery Planning is the critical factor that can prevent headaches or nightmares experienced by an organization in times of disaster. Having a disaster recovery plan marks the difference between organizations that can successfully manage crises with minimal cost, effort and with maximum speed, and those organizations that cannot. By having back-up plans, not only for equipment and network recovery, but also detailed disaster recovery plans that precisely outline what steps each person involved in recovery efforts should undertake, an organization can improve their recovery time and minimize the disrupted time for their normal business functions. Thus it is essential that disaster recovery plans are carefully laid

Owning a business can have many stressors day to day. When starting a business there is a lot of planning and preparation involved. Many small businesses are owners who have put their own money into the business and look at it as an investment. Unfortunately with all the planning that goes into starting a business, one thing is often over looked. Most of the time the “what ifs”, are not part of the planning stage. One reason for this is that people do not like to think of the bad things that could or may happen. So with all the time and planning put into starting a business why not put some extra thought into a plan B if a disaster strikes? This plan B could be a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan. Business continuity plans are an essential part of the modern day business. There are so many potential disasters for small businesses that could seize the production or even close the business down for good. A recent study from Gartner Inc., found that “90% of companies that experience data loss go out of business within two years. It also found that 80% of company owners have not thought about how they would keep their businesses up and running if a data disaster occurs.” According to the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, “about 60 percent of businesses that experience a major disaster such as a fire close

DLIS has decided to develop a business continuity plan (BCP) with the full support of management.

The effective contingency plan should only include the high-priority items and it should be as simple as possible. The purpose for the contingency plans is to response quickly when there are changes of an organization’s current strategy. For example, the predefined strategy is based on some assumptions about the economy but the outcome is not what the organization assumed, the contingency plan can support the organization to react promptly. The effective contingency planning includes a seven step process. First, Identify both beneficial and unfavorable events that could possibly derail the strategy. This step includes the development of the formal contingency planning policy statement in order to provide it to relevant stakeholders the authority and guideline that required developing the effective contingency plan. Policy will be published when executive confirms it. To gather the high-level business requirements, define scope and allocating project resources. Second, Specify trigger points and calculate about when contingent events are likely to occur. It involves the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify threat scenarios, prioritize key business processes and critical systems for business continuity. Executive approval on those choices of the critical business functions and the priority to recover during the disaster. Third, Assess the

The objective of this study was to develop a strategic contingency planning model to be used to fully incorporate emergency management and business continuity into organization structures. (For the purpose of this study, Emergency Management and Business Continuity were collectively referred to as “contingency planning.”) Presently, contingency planning is mainly done on an operational or tactical level. Current thinking suggests that contingency planning should be an active part of organizations’ overall strategic planning processes as well. Organizations will ultimately be better prepared for future disasters and crises.

It is very important to have planned for disasters because the best what to prevent a disaster is to prevent them from happening in the first place. (National archives, online 2012). When a disaster happens there will be a state of panic. In a state of panic no one will be thinking straight. The best thing to have is already have planned for the disaster to happen, and then you will have a set structure or guidelines to follow. This will make the process of dealing with disaster more effective. Everyone needs to know the plan for a disaster because then everyone will know what is needed from them for the plan to work. Everyone can then prepare themselves to do their role and there will be less confusion. Plans must also be exercised so that you can then call the plan reliable.. You can do this with either discussion based, table top or live exercises. (emergency planning Gov, online ,2013)This is a good way of showing if your plan can be changed to be more effective. When new incidents occur the disaster plan will be analysed and changed to where they thought they could of done better for example after 9/11,substantial investments were made in US states for the preparation of such disasters. ‘The US department of Health and human services established several additional resources, including deployable teams that can rapidly assist and respond to public emergency’s.’(Dr.Ali S. Khan, 2011) This shows how America seen one of their flaws when dealing with 9/11 and changed it to