Disaster Recovery Journal, Summer 2010

Robust Planning in Action

To further clarify the flexibility and need for robust business continuity planning, let’s take a look at how a mortgage company would respond to two different interruptions:

Data breach: The organization’s busi-
ness continuity program, in conjunction
with enterprise risk management, identi-
fied data breach as a key risk. As such, a
data breach response strategy was created
and later activated upon notification of the
breach. Luckily for the organization, the
plan included steps specific to data breach
that were not included in a previous all-
hazards plan or in the initial response
strategy. Due to governmental regulations
surrounding a data breach, and the com-
plexity of the necessary response, the plan
outlined the required notification process,

the timeline for contacting customers ( 45 days), contact information for legal counsel, and contracts with third-party providers such as public relations firms and printing companies. With the average cost of a lost record of $202 ($139 of which is lost business), the organization’s data breach response strategy lessened the opportunity for even greater financial hardship by avoiding regulatory fines and penalties.

Technology loss: The organization outsourced all of its information technology needs (servers, file storage, hosting, etc.) to a company that guaranteed 99.99 percent uptime. Unfortunately, a magnitude 8. 5 earthquake hit the technology provider and disabled its data center for four days. While the mortgage company did not have an information technology recovery plan, it referred to the initial response strategy which provided general information on situation assessment and communication in order to jump-start an ad-hoc recovery of information technology. It also summarized alternate processes and manual workarounds (where available and practical) in order to enable some operations during the disruption.

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Conclusion

The evolution of business continuity continues today with the death of all hazards planning. We now know that general procedures have their place in planning, but an organization’s most impactful interruption scenarios demand deeper analysis and planning before an event occurs. Robust business continuity planning provides organizations with strategies that are flexible yet custom-tailored to their unique business risks. While some planning is better than no planning at all, organizations who avoid the “one size fits all” approach and implement robust business continuity planning will achieve greater organizational resiliency and improved recoverability.

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Christopher Burton, AMBCI ,;is;a;consul-tant;at;Avalution;Consulting;and;focuses on;operational;risk;and;business;continuity management;in;both;public;and;private;sec-tors.;He;is;a;frequent;author;and;member of the Business Continuity Institute and Contingency Planners;of;Ohio.;Burton;may;be;contacted;at;christopher. burton@avalution.com.