Does my Organization Need a Business Continuity Plan? | blog ...

To put it simply ? YES!??

According to a recent Symantec survey of small to mid-market enterprises (SME?s), approximately half of the respondents indicated they are not well-equipped to handle an unforeseen disaster.? When asked why, it was indicated by almost half (40 percent) that they didn?t think disaster preparedness planning was a priority.? For most IT professionals, catastrophes like September 11th have taught us that companies that are unprepared for disasters are at a significant risk of failure should one occur.? In the Symantec survey, it is estimated that on average, SMEs are at risk to incur a loss of up to $23,000 per day, with a ?survival rate? ranging anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent, depending on the magnitude of the disaster.? Clearly, operating without a detailed recovery plan is reckless and financially irresponsible.

Development of a formulated and well-tested business continuity plan (BCP), which typically addresses specific areas such as disaster recovery, communications (internal and external) and incident management, can be a costly and time consuming process.? This may be too daunting of an exercise for many organizations with limited staff and budgets, but there are plenty of resources available to help simplify the process as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.? Here are just a few things to consider as you take your first steps in building a comprehensive BCP plan:

• Numerous websites offer free BCP document templates (such as FINRA), so you don?t need to pay for costly prototypes;
• There are an increasing number of vendors (including NaviSite, Inc.) that offer low cost, cloud-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Storage-as-a-Service (SaaS), and/or Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) managed hardware solutions that can help automate the process;
• These vendors typically have pay-per-use fee structures, and for the typical disaster recovery environment that sits dormant for the majority of the year, the monthly costs should not be overwhelming. It will be important to research each vendor and choose the solution that best fits your needs;
• A good BCP coupled with the critical follow-on testing does not have to run perfectly right out of the gate.? BCPs are meant to be an ongoing work-in-progress, and we test our plans with the purpose of finding faults, so take it slow and don?t let it intimidate you. Many IT professionals would agree to start small and grow into your BCP as time and dollars permit.?

With valuable resources and best practices available to help support your business continuity planning efforts, there?s really no excuse not to get started. Feel free to share any thoughts or tips you may have below ? any and all feedback is welcome.

Wallace Abbott is the senior director of Enterprise Technical Operations at NaviSite, Inc. ? a Time Warner Cable Company.? He holds an MBA degree in Management of Information Systems from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.

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Source: http://blog.navisite.com/does-my-organization-need-a-business-continuity-plan/

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