Creating a business continuity and disaster recovery plan comprises many aspects, from your business processes and network security program. Define the operations and critical assets Carrying out a business impact analysis will guide you in drawing up your BCDR strategies.
- A clearly defined team. ...
- A detailed plan. ...
- Effective testing. ...
- Crisis communications. ...
- Employee safety. ...
- Uninterrupted access to business resources. ...
- Continuous IT operations.
What are the components of a business continuity plan?
The fundamental components of a business continuity plan must include workspace recovery, cyber resilience, change management, and several other elements. Additionally, sharing a business continuity plan with the essential personnel and educating them on how to handle disasters is another vital component. Why?
What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery plans?
Following a business continuity plan will help you prepare for the worst and enable you to achieve your continuity goals. A disaster recovery plan, on the other hand, focuses on restoring your operations to their previous state after such an event, including recovering the data that was lost or damaged during it.
How do you develop a business continuity plan for a startup?
Development of a business continuity plan includes four steps: Conduct a business impact analysis to identify time-sensitive or critical business functions and processes and the resources that support them. Identify, document, and implement to recover critical business functions and processes.
Who should complete the business continuity resource requirements worksheet?
The Business Continuity Resource Requirements worksheet should be completed by business function and process managers. Completed worksheets are used to determine the resource requirements for recovery strategies.
What are the main components of disaster recovery plan?
There are seven main components of any good disaster recovery plan. These include mapping out your assets, identifying your assets' criticality and context, conducting a risk assessment, defining your recovery objectives, choosing a disaster recovery setup, budgeting for your setup, and testing and reviewing the plan.
What should a business recovery plan include?
10 Things You Must Include in Your Disaster Recovery Plan ChecklistRecovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) ... Hardware and Software Inventory. ... Identify Personnel Roles. ... List of Disaster Recovery Sites. ... Remote Storage of Physical Documents and Storage Media. ... Disaster Response Procedures.More items...
What should a disaster recovery and business continuity plan include?
What Does a Disaster Recovery Plan Typically Include?Business impact analysis.Assumptions and constraints.Communication processes.Data and system backup plan.Damage and impact assessment.Response communication and action plan.
What are the three essential elements of a BCP?
Three Key Components of a Business Continuity PlanRecover personnel. Successful BCPs are built from the top down. ... Recovery procedure. The recovery procedure is that part of your BCP that outlines the strategies for business functionality. ... Data backup.
What are five major elements of a typical disaster recovery plan?
5 Elements of a Disaster Recovery Plan – Is Your Business...Create a disaster recovery team. ... Identify and assess disaster risks. ... Determine critical applications, documents, and resources. ... Determine critical applications, documents, and resources. ... Specify backup and off-site storage procedures.More items...
What are the four main steps of the business continuity planning process?
Four Steps to Developing an Effective Business Continuity PlanIdentify threats or risks. ... Conduct a business impact analysis. ... Adopt controls for prevention and mitigation. ... Test, exercise and improve your plan routinely.
What type of information is included in a business continuity plan?
A BCP covers risks including cyber attacks, pandemics, natural disasters and human error. The array of possible risks makes it vital for an organization to have a business continuity plan to preserve its health and reputation. A proper BCP decreases the chance of a costly power outage or IT outage.
What is the first step of developing a business continuity plan?
Step 1: Risk Assessment Assessment of the potential impact of various business disruption scenarios. Determination of the most likely threat scenarios. Assessment of telecommunication recovery options and communication plans. Prioritization of findings and development of a roadmap.
Which is the first step in building a business continuity plan?
The first step to creating a business continuity plan is understanding what business processes you need to be worried about. Critical business processes are those that are necessary for the survival of the company due to—for example—loss of revenue, customer service interruption or brand damage (just to name a few).
What are the 5 components of a business continuity plan?
Fundamental Components of a Business Continuity PlanWorkspace Recovery.Cyber Resilience.Data Backup, Replication, and Recovery.Personnel.Third-Party Service Providers.Telecommunications.Change Management.Communication and Notifications.
What is Section 5 of the business continuity plan?
Phase 5: Test and Monitor Risk is not static. Personnel changes, potential threats, and critical business functions will change over time. A BCP must be validated through testing or practical application and must be kept up-to-date.
What are the five important concerns to be considered in a business continuity plan?
5 Key Considerations for Business Continuity PlanningAuditing. As mentioned previously, the BIA is an essential part of any organization's BCP. ... Setting SLAs. ... Monitoring Your Business Processes, Not Just Your Infrastructure. ... Communicating Issues. ... Automating Procedures.
How to develop a business continuity plan?
Development of a business continuity plan includes four steps: Conduct a business impact analysis to identify time-sensitive or critical business functions and processes and the resources that support them . Identify, document, and implement to recover critical business functions and processes. Organize a business continuity team ...
What is a periodic review of a business continuity agreement?
Periodic review of the agreement is needed to determine if there is a change in the ability of each party to support the other. There are many vendors that support business continuity and information technology recovery strategies.
Why should recovery strategies be developed for information technology?
Therefore, recovery strategies for information technology should be developed so technology can be restored in time to meet the needs of the business. Manual workarounds should be part of the IT plan so business can continue while computer systems are being restored. Resources for Business Continuity Planning.
What should be distributed to business process managers?
The worksheets Operational and Financial Impacts and Business Continuity Resource Requirements should be distributed to business process managers along with instructions about the process and how the information will be used. After all managers have completed their worksheets, information should be reviewed. Gaps or inconsistencies should be identified. Meetings with individual managers should be held to clarify information and obtain missing information.
What is a completed worksheet?
Completed worksheets are used to determine the resource requirements for recovery strategies. Following an incident that disrupts business operations, resources will be needed to carry out recovery strategies and to restore normal business operations.
What is recovery strategy?
Recovery strategies are alternate means to restore business operations to a minimum acceptable level following a business disruption and are prioritized by the recovery time objectives (RTO) developed during the business impact analysis.
What is the recovery time objective?
Those functions or processes with the highest potential operational and financial impacts become priorities for restoration. The point in time when a function or process must be recovered, before unacceptable consequences could occur , is often referred to as the “Recovery Time Objective.”.
What is contingency plan?
The contingency plan should describe, if necessary, off-site computer operations or temporary hardware or software use. Businesses should test regularly, and review this plan for updates to technology or other circumstances that may change.
What is business risk assessment?
An assessment should define, and identify the importance that data repositories play in housing critical data within an organization.
What is the impact of downtime on a business?
Not all stakeholders may understand the impact that downtime can have on a business; that reputation, liability and even jobs are at stake if a team is not hyper-responsive to these emergencies. Make sure your employees know that, in these instances, time equals much more than money.
Why do organizations need business continuity and disaster recovery?
Now more than ever, organizations need sound plans for business continuity and disaster recovery to ensure they can weather any crisis or emergency that may come its way. Business continuity and disaster recovery plans, which are both strongly related, will ensure your organization will remain operational after an adverse event.
Why is it important to develop a disaster recovery plan?
It’s important as you begin to develop your business continuity and disaster recovery plan that you weigh a wide variety of risks that may impact your organization and develop response and continuity plans that match the level of impact anticipated. Without a plan, you’ll be left scrambling when the unknown occurs, ...
Why is research and development important?
Research and development is often a component of reducing internal risks because it involves keeping current with new technologies. By investing in long-term assets, such as leveraging cloud and colocation services, companies can reduce the risk of falling behind the competition and losing market share.
What are the three critical considerations that will help you to protect your organization now and in the future?
1. Leverage existing business continuity and disaster recovery resources. The goal of business continuity and disaster recovery plans is to limit risk and get an organization running as close to normal as possible ...
What are the three types of internal risk factors?
The three types of internal risk factors are human factors, technological factors, and physical factors . Human-factor Risk: Personnel issues may pose operational challenges. Key members of the staff who become ill or injured and, as a result, are unable to work can decrease production.
Workspace Recovery
- Identify backup sites for employees and alternatives for core operations, facilities, and infrastructure.
- A backup site should mirror operational functionality of primary site.
- In the case of disruptions, there should be designated alternative sites for employees (this in…
- Identify backup sites for employees and alternatives for core operations, facilities, and infrastructure.
- A backup site should mirror operational functionality of primary site.
- In the case of disruptions, there should be designated alternative sites for employees (this includes key personnel) in the resumption of business operations.
Data Backup, Replication and Recovery
- Maintain data confidentiality, integrity, and availability for all data.
- Accessible, off-site repository of software, configuration settings, and related documentation.
- SOPs to recover critical networks and systems.
- Data replication (also referred to as data synchronization or mirroring) is the process of copying data, to maintain identical data sets in redundant locations.
Personnel
- Resilience is dependent upon personnel availability to maintain critical business processes. Know that key personnel could be unavailable or distracted during such events as natural disasters, seve...
- Management should plan for events during which personnel may not be able to access facilities and critical personnel may not be available immediately after the disruption.
- Resilience is dependent upon personnel availability to maintain critical business processes. Know that key personnel could be unavailable or distracted during such events as natural disasters, seve...
- Management should plan for events during which personnel may not be able to access facilities and critical personnel may not be available immediately after the disruption.
- Considerations:
Third Party Service Providers and Managed Security Service Providers
- Many entities depend on third-party service providers to perform or support critical operations. A disruption in the delivery of those services can have a direct impact on entities’ resilience. A c...
- Management should consider the same risks outlined in their entity’s own internal BCP(s) in relation to third-party service providers, as well as:
Telecommunications
- BCP should ensure appropriate redundancy levels in the entity’s telecommunications infrastructure.
- Identify and mitigate single points of failure across infrastructure.
- Develop plan to address an outage in the telecom lines.
- Establish redundant telecommunications links.
Power
- The financial industry is dependent on power to run its technology infrastructure and to supply basic necessities to personnel and customers.
- As part of its short-term and long-term plans, management should consider the following:
Change Management
- As changes are made to production systems and business processes during the normal course of business, recovery systems and documentation at alternate locations should similarly be updated to refle...
- The change management process should allow for the expedient implementation of emergency changes during an event, such as changing an access control list to provide rapi…
- As changes are made to production systems and business processes during the normal course of business, recovery systems and documentation at alternate locations should similarly be updated to refle...
- The change management process should allow for the expedient implementation of emergency changes during an event, such as changing an access control list to provide rapid access for troubleshooting...
Communications
- Consider, plan for, and prepare multiple mechanisms to communicate with others. For example, when traditional voice communications and telecommunications are impaired or inoperable, management may...
- Communication with customers and employees :
- Communications with regulators :
Notification Standards
- Formal notification standards should be developed and integrated into the business continuity planning process. Various communication methods, such as pagers, satellite phones, cell phones, e-mail,...
Business Continuity Plans
- A business continuity plan outlines how processes, assets, resources, and partners will be affected by a disaster and how the company can lessen the effects of the situation. A well-thought-out plan may even allow businesses to continue working without disruption if they have the necessary assets and protocols in place. Create a checklist of equipm...
Disaster Recovery Plan
- A disaster recovery plan is the next tool for a business to maintain its position in the market. Like a business continuity plan, having a recovery plan before an event occurs allows for as seamless a return to normal as possible. Here you’ll want to identify key stakeholders, assets, and processes and pre-determine how to leverage them to get back to business.
Testing Your Disaster Recovery Plan
- Next, test the plans. With a manufactured emergency, a dry run helps determine what works, what plans and procedures don’t have the intended outcomes, and what you need to tweak. These could be critically important to assure if the time comes and action is needed, everyone is ready, and the procedures are adequate. Every business should take time to create its individualized pl…
Resource Required to Support Recovery Strategies
Conducting The Business Continuity Impact Analysis
- The worksheets Operational and Financial Impacts and Business Continuity Resource Requirementsshould be distributed to business process managers along with instructions about the process and how the information will be used. After all managers have completed their worksheets, information should be reviewed. Gaps or inconsistencies should be identified. Meet…
Developing Manual Workarounds
- Identify the steps in the automated process - creating a diagram of the process can help. Consider the following aspects of information and work flow: Internal Interfaces (department, person, activity and resource requirements) 1. External Interfaces (company, contact person, activity and resource requirements) 2. Tasks (in sequential order) 3. Man...
Business Risk Assessment
Contingency Plans
- Businesses must have a contingency plan documented in the event that hardware, software or networks become dysfunctional or simply go down. This plan should explain the nature of the system unavailability in the event of an outage, and should detail a predetermined recovery process that will be implemented to regain operation. The contingency plan ...
Consider Disaster Recovery as A Service
- Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) is an approach to data recovery that has gained popularity over the years. Based in the cloud, DRaaS has many capabilities that traditional disaster recovery does not, including cost-effectiveness, and scalability. DRaaS vendor, Acronis explains how their solution works, stating: “It will back up and replicate your systems into an on-site appliance and …
Data Backup Plans
- A Data Backup Plan should define and address, at minimum, the following: 1. Personnel responsible for executing the backup plan, keeping in mind data confidentiality best interests. 2. Construct a schedule that routinely checks systems and backup data. Be advised that, depending on backup and recovery solution provider, the cost of more frequent backup may increase. Mak…
Communication When Systems Are Down
- In the event of a disaster– if your company’s internet and phones are down, this could throw a major stick-in-the-spokes of business continuity. You must discuss with all employees a plan of action to keep in touch with customers, employees who are off-site, and most importantly, a way to contact emergency services if outgoing lines of communication have shut down. A log of the …
Establishing timelines
- Most importantly, make sure to explore your business’ recovery time objectives. How long is too long before teams are able to recover critical systems when they fail? What financial implications would 5 hours, 10 hours, or 24 hours of downtime mean to your bottom line? With this in mind, establish a recovery time objective (RTO). This is the duration of time within which a business pr…
Risk Assessment
Data Backup and Recovery Plan
Business Impact Analysis
Communications Plan
Employee Training
Testing and Maintenance
Equipment and Facility
- One of the most important aspects of business continuity and data recovery planning is ensuring you have the necessary equipment and facilities to support your operations. This includes everything from servers and backup systems to office space and telecom equipment. If you don’t have the infrastructure in place to support your business, you’ll nee...