Information Systems : An Essential Component Of All Modern Organizations

“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

Disasters are unforeseen circumstances and the only way of tackling them is to be thoroughly prepared for the impact. The prime aim of having a Disaster Recovery and a Business Continuity Plan is to have minimal impact on day-to-day businesses. The Three-tiered business continuity plan suggested above considers many aspects of unanticipated problems and shows readiness to work around these

a business continuity plan starting with a risk analysis, business impact analysis, and alignment of critical

Information system is a combination of hardware, software, infrastructure as well trained personnel who organized and facilitate planning, control, coordination and decision making within an organization. Information systems are also able to implement a vital integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data. With this, it provided organizations with the necessary information, knowledge, and digital products needed. Information system bring the meaning of business applications that manage their operations, compete in the market place, manage accounts and human resources. This system have a vast variety of components that are crucial for a enterprise, business to function at his highest level, IT software is responsible that all system are reliable and up to date.

A BCP should cover all of the things that could cease regular business operation. Once that has been establish, then we will need to determine what is required for continue operation during a disaster. Then who are the key personnel and what their job will be in support of the continue operation. Identify the key equipment, storage data area and the secondary location at least 30-50 miles away from your primary position.

[Give the mission of the organization; describe the purpose for the plan; explain under what circumstances it would be activated; explain how the plan will be used by the organization; depict the expected outcome of the plan activation; give the assumptions used in the development of the plan; and give an overview of the structure that will implement it.

The main purpose of this paper is to prepare a business continuity plan for the White House security staff during any natural or manmade disaster on geographic locations in order to carry out daily activities in an efficient and effective manner. This plan provides an effective guidelines that is required to be followed by the security staffs of White House under such circumstances in order to protect the security staffs from severe personal injuries and accidents and the CIA triad of information and assets as well. In this paper, the business continuity planning is elaborated using the plan objective, plan scope, plan scenarios, plan assumptions and recovery strategies and activities.

An important aspect I want to review is the disaster recovery plan. This plan is different from business continuity but some features do overlap. A disaster recovery plan prepares the business to recover their IT systems and assets after a disaster. Beginning with Wilma Stone, Margie Nelson, and Gary Thomas as management they need to meet with their IT department heads and perform a risk assessment to identify IT equipment and services that are critical to business operations. Identifying these critical components will give an initial point to recovery. As these are essential to business operations, the chosen IT systems should be priority in prevention, response, and during recovery. Charts and documents will help organize this and inform staff on the involved areas.

The significance of each major phase of continuity planning merits attention because each phase contributes to building all four areas of business continuity: disaster recovery, business recovery, business resumption, and contingency planning:

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).

It is generally accepted that information is a vital commodity for the successful operation of today’s organizations. Nowadays modern business organizations are using computerized information systems in order to obtain such information. However as the technology advances rapidly the main issue is how can an organization should effectively use such an information system - which its management sometimes can be unpredictable - in order to effectively help the whole organization structure to improve and take the most out of it.

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

An information system is a base in today’s business world. Everything is electronic. In various businesses, the survival and ability to succeed strategic business goals is challenging without extensive use of information system. Businesses improve the efficiency of their operations in order to accomplish higher profitablity. Besides that, information systems are important tools available to managers for achieving higher levels of efficiency and productiviy in business operations. For an example, Zara uses the PDA technology to gather customer feedback and input.

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

Contingency planners are now asserting that contingency planning is a value-added component that can be a competitive advantage in the marketplace as well a means of helping organizations save money. Processes that are deeply analyzed in terms of continuity will usually be more secure, and new ways of working may emerge to help streamline operations. Contingency planning can be useful when forging alliances with external organizations or during acquisition phases. Contingency planning should be part of an organization’s quality cycle as well. “Business continuity and disaster recovery have gained somewhat in the eyes of top corporate management since the start of the 1990s. As the industry has slowly evolved from what could almost have been called a ‘black art’ to something starting to resemble a disciplined science, basic business principles have begun to become increasingly relevant” (Rothstein, 2003, p. 1).