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Continuity Central's editor, David Honour, interviewed various SunGard Availability Services staff members about the above topic and the following paper is a result of these conversations.
 Risk is changing. And the pace of change is accelerating. The challenge for business continuity managers is to ensure that day-to-day practices stay ahead of the curve. In no area is this truer than in workplace recovery.
In order to remain at the cutting edge of workplace recovery, to ensure maximum protection for the organization and to reduce recovery time objectives to the absolute minimum, three areas need to be considered. These are:
- Threat trends
- Technology changes
- Human resources.
Threat trends
While much research has been carried out into what business continuity managers think are the changes in the threats faced by their organization, the most accurate way to determine what is actually happening in terms of threat trends is to look at real incidents ideally within their geographic region. SunGard Availability Services has decades of invocation statistics in its records. Analysis of these enables a clear picture to emerge of which threats are reducing and which are becoming more prevalent. The chart below shows the Workplace invocations (disaster declarations) which have been managed by SunGard in the UK since 1995.
Click here for a larger version of the above
The chart is clear evidence of the changing nature of risk in terms of causes for invocation during the time in question – for example, power disruption has remained the biggest threat to the workplace throughout the period, but now accounts for a much smaller proportion than at its peak in 2006 when it accounted for 52 per cent of invocations.
Terrorism whilst not frequent can create significant spikes in the amount of invocations as was seen in 2005’s 7th July attacks (and which the UK mainland previously experienced during the IRA campaign).
Communications is the third most frequent cause for organizations to invoke SunGard, and whilst this may surprise you, it is increasing annually.
In 2004, hardware failure peaked but has since fallen away and didn’t account for anyWorkplace invocations in 2007, but do not be complacent of this phenomenon. Hardware failure remains the perennial number one cause of technology invocations.
The one significant trend to watch is flooding which didn’t even register until 2002 but now accounts for nearly one fifth of invocations. This is closely followed by denial of access which occurs often as a result of an incident with a neighbouring facility. It is interesting to note that in the immediate aftermath of the 7th July attacks that safety precautions implemented by blue light services led to ‘denial of exit’ situations for businesses in the affected areas.
Technology changes
In early 2008, SunGard published 'From Adversity to Availability' (1), a comprehensive report into the changing nature of risk. The report looks in detail at technology changes and their impact on Information Availability (IA) – defined as “the continuum of disciplines, spanning security and infrastructure as well as business continuity and disaster recovery, allowing organizations to keep people (e.g., employees and customers) and information connected at all times. As an ongoing strategy, IA provides a high degree of risk tolerance, whilst helping organizations ensure an appropriate response to interruptions as and when they occur”. 'From Adversity to Availability' identifies the following areas as those which will have the greatest impact on the technology risk landscape:
The growing criticality of communications
If an organization’s external communications processes are unavailable, this has two major impacts on customers:
Direct impacts: He/she is very likely to call or email a competitor or visit its website in the case of online downtime.
Reputational impacts: He/she is likely to decide that the organization is unreliable and/or not capable of managing its business effectively. People also often assume that if they cannot ‘get through’ to an organization it has probably gone out of business. This is particularly true for smaller organizations. It is therefore crucial that organizations recognise that it is vital that threats to both incoming and outgoing communications channels are considered.
Information security
Information security is an area of rapidly changing threats. It should be recognised that protecting the ‘perimeter’ of the organizational network is not enough; a comprehensive security policy, which considers the security of information flowing within the organization as well as into and out of it, is vital.
Data growth
As disks become cheaper, regulation requires data to be retained for longer and data cleansing is seen as just too difficult; the amount of data companies are storing is rising exponentially year on year creating several new threats. According to a 2007 study by IDC (‘The Expanding Digital Universe’), an estimated 161 billion gigabytes was created in 2006 – equivalent to three million times all the information in every book ever written. The analyst predicts that this figure is set to grow to 988 billion gigabytes by 2010. As demands for data storage continue to increase, so pressure on data centre space will grow, sparking knock on problems associated with power and cooling at data centres.
The situation is complicated by disparate backup methodologies, processes, tools and data retention policies. Many companies have no more than an eight-hour window for backups and are finding it increasingly difficult to backup their data in the time available. In order to address this problem some organizations are buying bigger, faster libraries which are complex to setup, and can be expensive and difficult to recover. For this reason many organizations are increasingly looking at offsite electronic data vaulting and managed recovery as the way forward for data backup.
Organizations should also be utilising information lifecycle management (ILM) to analyse the value and importance of difference types of data within the organization in order to manage their storage and availability needs as appropriate. It should be noted that data that is replicated offsite also needs to be backed up and periodically recovered to ensure the integrity of the solution.
Software as a Service
Software as a Service (SaaS), is when organizations use software applications that are managed and controlled by a third party supplier. Payment is made either by subscription or via a pay-for-use model. The software runs via a web browser and users do not need to implement any client-side applications. According to Gartner, the worldwide SaaS market reached $6.3 billion in 2006 and is forecast to grow to $19.3 billion by year-end 2011. With on demand and just in time procurement departments may be independently exposing the organization to new critical and unproven suppliers outside of the IT change management process.
Virtualization
Virtualization is becoming increasingly important as an Information Availability tool but it does bring with it risks that must also be considered. These include the tendency for the creation of multiple, heterogeneous server virtualization environments within single organizations, rather than centrally rolled-out holistic implementations. Such heterogeneity results in difficulties such as increased configuration and administration requirements, workloads, security vulnerabilities; and difficulty with reporting, visibility and metrics for obtaining one consistent view on server efficiency, performance and utilisation.
Any workplace recovery strategy must consider the above threat areas as they present themselves today, and must consider how they are likely to evolve.
Human resources
Every workplace recovery strategy has one basic aim: to maintain the ability of an organization’s people to carry out their roles during a crisis or incident. As such, it is people focussed and any trend or development which affects the ability or willingness of people to use a workplace recovery facility is essential to consider. However, it was not until the events of July 2005 that organizations really began to explore this area. The terror attacks of 7th July 2005 caused wide-spread disruption to organizations, not because of the minimal physical impact of the attacks on London’s infrastructure, but because of the subsequent lockdown of the public transport network and the psychological impact: people did not want to travel due to fear of further attacks. Workplace recovery facilities were open, available, and unaffected. But getting staff into place as per organizational business continuity plans proved a difficult task.
Later in that year the UK Tripartite Financial Authorities (the FSA, Bank of England and the Treasury) conducted a business continuity exercise which examined the people issues highlighted by 7/7 and subsequently published the following findings:
- Human aspects are frequently overlooked within business continuity arrangements
- Over two-thirds of participants did not have policies preventing key staff travelling together
- 25 percent of participants’ workplace recovery arrangement take no account of where their staff live
- Half of participants expect staff to operate from alternative sites but have not carried out any work to ensure that workplace recovery arrangements are acceptable or feasible for employees.
In order to explore the above issues further, during Continuity Central conducted a survey into workplace recovery trends. 253 people responded to an online survey and key results were as follows:
Is workplace recovery still an appropriate business continuity strategy?
Only 12 percent of respondents felt that workplace recovery was ‘old fashioned and will not be required in the future’. The majority of respondents (60 percent) felt that there will ‘always be a need for workplace recovery but at present provision is sufficient. 28 percent of respondents said that ‘there will be increasing demand for workplace recovery in the future – suppliers need to invest in more facilities.
Are the home locations of staff taken into account when choosing a workplace recovery facility?
Only 39 percent of respondents said that the home locations of staff were taken into account when choosing a workplace recovery facility. 53 percent stated that this was not the case and 9 percent of respondents did not know.
SunGard’s workplace recovery specialists have spent substantial time considering how business continuity strategies will need to change to more effectively manage the people aspects of workarea recovery. SunGard customers and the company’s Customer Panel have also been consulted, with the following areas emerging for consideration:
- Psychological
- Home locations and travel patterns
- Changing workarea staffing requirements
- Transport specific issues
- London specific issues.
Psychological considerations
When planning a workplace recovery strategy it is important to consider the psychological responses which are likely to occur after an incident. These are likely to differ depending on the seriousness and type of event, and people’s own individual characteristics. However, understanding established theories of human psychology can provide some useful insights. Perhaps one of the most useful theories from a disaster-response perspective is Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. This well known and widely accepted theory was proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943. The model states that people have specific and predictable needs, some of which take precedence over others until they have been met. The most basic of these are physiological needs (oxygen, water, food, etc), safety and security. When these needs are not met, either for themselves or their immediate family, people will focus on these things to the detriment of other responsibilities.
Thinking about workplace recovery with Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs in mind leads to the following conclusions:
- In a clash between work and family, people will often put family first. Therefore when planning workplace recovery, consideration needs to be given to meeting employee’s family needs. This may involve such things as helping with childcare and being flexible with starting and finishing hours.
- People will generally avoid any situation which seems unsafe. As already discussed, 7/7 provided a good example of this. The public transport network was seen to be unsafe, so people were reluctant to use it. Workplace strategies need to consider what dangers are likely to present themselves after an incident and what impact this may have on the willingness of staff to muster at workplace recovery locations. Looking ahead, a pandemic situation could cause difficulties in this area. Employees may be unwilling to leave the relative safety of their homes; the risk of exposure to the influenza virus whilst travelling to and whilst working at a workplace recovery facility may be perceived as too high. Therefore a knock-on effect of a pandemic may be that ‘conventional’ incidents occurring within a pandemic period may need a different workplace strategy than if the same incident occurred in non-pandemic times.
- People will prioritise their physical needs. Hunger, thirst and tiredness are not accepted for very long and any workplace recovery strategy needs to take into account the provision of food and temporary overnight accommodation if staff are being asked to travel long distances to a recovery centre.
- People have a need to feel in control. Employees are more likely to work effectively in the workplace recovery centre if they understand why they are there; what they are supposed to be doing; how long they are likely to be there; and if the working environment is an acceptable distance from their usual place of work taking into account the type and effect of the disruption. I.e. People prefer to remain as close as possible for minor incidents such as a power outage but travel further afield following a bomb incident.
Home locations and travel patterns
Traditionally, workplace recovery strategies have been based around the physical location of the business, the business unit or the department being protected. While this is still important, more sophisticated strategies are now been considered which take into account other factors such as the home locations of staff and commuting patterns. Advances in recovery centres, which have been pioneered by SunGard, have made such sophistication possible. SunGard’s concept of ‘rollback’, where all recovery centres are interchangeable and are interconnected, means that a multi-site recovery centre strategy is now possible. Rather than all employees reporting to a single designated recovery centre, groups of employees can be sent to different recovery centres but can continue to operate as effectively as if they were all under the same roof. This means that organizations can now intelligently pre-plan recovery centre provision with employees needs in mind.
Many larger organizations will draw staff from various commuter towns and villages and this will result in employees being clustered together at various locations. These can be mapped and the nearest recovery centre can then be identified. In the event of an invocation, employees can then be sent to the most convenient recovery centre for them. For a short invocation the benefits of this may be relatively minimal; but for a long-term invocation (and they can sometimes run into months) the benefits of this approach for employee well-being are much greater.
Changing workplace staffing requirements
In recent years there have been significant changes in the number of staff needed in a recovery situation; You could be forgiven for thinking that with the current economic down turn and the subsequent layoffs, fewer positions are required, when in fact the opposite is true.
Why? With fewer staff within the business picking up the workload of those who left the business, the value of the work they perform increases and they become more critical to the business.
So with increased demand for positions, some disaster recovery suppliers with smaller facilities could be placed under considerable pressure unable to house staff in existing facilities during multiple invocations. However, a credible rollback option can accommodate the largest invocation; with employees being allocated to neighbouring facilities should a recovery centre become fully occupied.
Additionally, different types of incident will result in differing workplace recovery requirements. Whereas, traditionally, once a company’s allocated workplace recovery seats were filled there were very few options to meet further requirements, with rollback employees can quickly be allocated to neighbouring facilities should a recovery centre become fully occupied.
Recovery solutions tend to be long-term arrangements, yet the issues faced by companies needing those solutions are changing more and more quickly. Preparing plans for different threats and scenarios demands flexible solutions than can adapt easily to the changing situation. Companies therefore need to think about how flexible their BC solution can be, and what the cost of this flexibility is going to be over the course of the contract.
Transport specific issues
Workplace recovery strategies rely on staff being able to travel to recovery centres and often companies will provide transport to facilitate this. However this in itself creates risks which companies need to consider:
- If employees are herded together onto one bus, then that bus becomes a single point of failure. Should it become trapped in a traffic jam then all the employees who should be at the recovery centre will be prevented from reaching their destination. A fleet of taxis or minibuses taking more than one route to any particular recovery centre is a safer option and, again using rollback, should it be known that a traffic jam will make it difficult to quickly access one recovery centre, staff can be re-routed to a different facility.
- Critical employees shouldn’t travel together in large groups due to the risk of an accident occurring. If a number of staff were to become involved in a serious road traffic accident, for example, this could have a major long term impact on productivity as well as the short-term ability to meet workplace recovery requirements.
London specific issues
The workplace recovery planning model for London-based organizations has changed fundamentally in recent years due to the issue of concentration risk. This is the threat that both the recovery centre and the main office facility could both be involved in the same incident if located too closely together. Concentration risk worries have resulted in a change where many central London-based organizations no longer use a workplace recovery centre within 5 to 10 minutes walk of the main office facility but instead use an outer London facility. This has created transport issues and has meant that timeframes for getting staff operational in recovery centres have been extended. SunGard now recommends a further strategy which rollback makes possible: an inner-outer recovery plan. This simply means that companies can return to the convenience of using an inner-London recovery centre during a ‘normal’ invocation but can send staff to an outer-London facility should a wide-area incident occur. Rollback effectively means that concentration risk is no longer an issue for SunGard’s clients.
Conclusion
Risk is changing. However, the business continuity profession’s strategies and services have kept pace with this change. SunGard has been at the forefront of ensuring that this happens and will continue to lead the way; rollback has opened up the area of workplace recovery and offers a host of new and flexible solutions and strategies. Workplace recovery strategies can now be intelligently planned to meet both the needs of organization and employee; and can be adapted in real-time to deal with all the vagaries that a disaster situation engenders.
Reference
(1) ‘From Adversity to Availability: A Practical Insight Into Business Risk, Continuity & Information Availability’. To receive a free copy go to http://www.a2areport.co.uk/
For more information: 0800 143 413, infoavail@sungard.com or click here.
•Date: 23rd Sept 2008• Region: UK/World •Type: Article •Topic: Recovery facilities
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