| The perils of scenario-based planning The old adage states that, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ In business continuity management, it could be said that a comprehensive business continuity plan is worth a thousand scenarios. Causes for disasters are innumerable. They range from natural disasters to those caused by humans, inadvertently or intentionally, such as computer viruses that bring can bring entire companies down. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the top two natural disasters in terms of cost are floods and earthquakes. (See list at end of this article for the top 10 natural disasters.) Manmade disasters can run the gamut from grave to comical, but each is seriously costly. Ontrack Data Recovery’s 2004 Top 10 list of the strangest and funniest computer mishaps reported disasters which included broken disk-drives that were frozen - in the freezer; equipment destroyed from a 19,000-foot drop; a steel construction beam falling on and crushing a laptop containing the building plans; a laptop thrown in a toilet which was subsequently flushed a couple of times from a frustrated user; and a laptop which was run over by an airplane. But disasters are rarely straightforward and quite often cause other disasters. Earthquakes, for example, can cause an assortment of many other disasters including landslides, explosions from gas leaks, flooding from sprinklers, or casualties from collapsing buildings. Where to start But, if an organisation plans for the most likely scenarios with the highest probabilities of occurrence, they will be ignoring events that are less likely to occur but potentially have great impacts due to their likelihood of causing great damage. Additionally, if an organisation focuses on scenario-based planning, development and maintenance for the vast number of plans would require a lot of time and resources. For a global company with many offices, the number of plans will increase exponentially. It would also be challenging to conduct regular exercises for all the different scenarios. Advice from experts “A good plan will be simple without being simplistic,” the report further advises. “You will never be able to plan in detail for every possible event.” According to DRII’s certification training materials, the scope of the business continuity project should be “both general and comprehensive” and should “cover the worst case scenario which is recoverable.” Certainly, both organisations advise that during a disaster, life and safety issues always come first. After they have been addressed or are under control, recovery thereafter typically involves the following three factors: people, location and data. Planning based on these three factors will enable recovery from almost any disaster. People make the plan Having alternate staff identified in recovery plans and trained is critical for all these reasons. If possible, having alternate team leaders and members in more than one location can increase the rate of recoverability from a disaster. A disaster can affect transportation regionally and incapacitate the ability of recovery team members to access necessary sites for recovery. If possible, include alternate team leaders and members from another location not affected by the disaster. This way, they can travel to the recovery site and begin or carry out the entire recovery process for the affected staff and their processes. Staff in the affected area can concentrate on resumption activities once a location (original, temporary, or permanent site) is ready to be occupied. This also allows those in the affected area to recover themselves from shock, injury and damage to personal property before they become ready to assist with the organisation’s recovery efforts. Location, location, location Organisations with multiple locations have some advantage if planning is done carefully. Displacing space in another location without careful planning can cause additional disasters, including unhappy co-workers and disrupted workflow causing serious hold-ups affecting the entire company’s operations. If the organisation can not utilise multiple locations at the time of a disaster, developing good relations with real-estate companies ahead of time can be very useful. Have an idea of what real estate is available and at what cost. If there is a possibility of expansion, consider locations with business continuity in mind. Plan for duplicate functions or processes in multiple locations. If the primary location is in a major city or metropolitan area, real estate can be scarce and expensive. Consider the suburbs for a nearby location. This option has several advantages. Many employees likely already live in the suburbs. This would shorten their commute and, at the same time, be a more environmentally sound solution. Real estate in the suburbs is also generally less expensive and can offer greater options with respect to size and location. All about data If the disaster is to the network, whether it be a full or partial outage, alternate network connectivity becomes critical. Having more than one data centre to house backup data becomes advantageous in cases where a disaster affects data or data access. When possible and practical, having multiple data centres has similar advantages to having multiple team members perform the workload for those that have become incapacitated. With multiple locations, strategies can be developed that would enable one or more locations to absorb the workload or partial workload of a downed site. With careful planning, these data centres can partially or fully absorb, though possibly at a slower processing speed than usual, the load of the data centre that has been affected by the disaster. Alternate data centres can also act as alternate Network Operation Centers (NOCs), enabling automatic re-routing of data should a network go down. Ultimately, the key is to prepare for every possible disaster. The goal is to have alternates – alternate people, alternate locations and alternate sources of data or access to data. Once people, locations and data are provided for, developing recovery tasks becomes much less complicated and is also practical for almost any scenario. Linda Pahkim, CBCP, is a consultant with Strohl Systems Group, Inc. and works nationally and internationally on all aspects of business continuity. Ms. Pahkim is the Speakers Bureau Coordinator for the Business Recovery Managers Association (BRMA) in Northern California providing educational presentations on BCP. Also trained in California ’s Standard Emergency Management System (SEMS), Ms. Pahkim participates in disaster preparedness activities with local counties and cities. Top 10 natural disasters in terms of cost 1. Floods
•Date:
11th February 2005 •Region: US/World •Type:
Article •Topic: BC general |
