Call it what you will; business resumption plan, disaster recovery plan or emergency plan, any business that relies upon technology for any single process should have one in place. These plans can be anything from a simple call list of contacts to very extensive documents outlining each and every move made by each and every player ensuring the most efficient recovery possible. So what is right for your business? Here are some things to consider:

• Is there a system or systems that you rely so heavily upon that without it your business will not function?
  

This type of system is usually noted as a business critical system, and should be well documented with the amount of time it can be down and the exact steps necessary to bring it back up to a functional status. Additionally, each system like this should have a single point person who is responsible for the plan as well as clearly spelled out tasks and responsible persons for the pieces of the recovery. With a system this important, leave nothing to chance.

• For systems that are not business critical, how long can each of these be down before they begin to affect your business?

You should make an exhaustive lists of your systems and prioritize the order in which they should be recovered. This will avoid the loss of valuable time during the crisis trying to make these decisions. Then, a plan should be put into place for each system based upon how a recovery can be executed. Again, list everyone’s responsibilities here so there is no confusion on recovery day.

• Update your plan

Your technology environment, as well as your staff, changes on a regular basis. When staff come and go, be sure to update the plan and ensure that the new people know what their responsibilities are in the event the plan must be put into place. Also, as you get new systems, these must be accounted for in the plan so nothing slips through the cracks in a crisis situation.

• Test your plan!

Going through the exercise of creating a plan is great, but if it does not actually work in the event of a disaster, it will not do you much good. A plan should be tested on a regular basis (at least annually) to make sure that it is still an effective way for your business to recover from a disaster.

Having a BR plan is like having insurance. You hope you never have to use it, but when you do, you sure will be glad you had it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 3:17 pm by Michael Giuffrida and is filed under Disaster Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.